Rachel Reeves’s hidden Budget tax change that’s good news for married couples | Personal Finance | Finance

The Married Couple’s Allowance and Blind Person’s Allowance will be uprated by the September 2025 consumer price index rate of 3.8%, Rachel Reeves announced in her Budget yesterday. “This will be legislated for through a Treasury Order and take effect from 6 April 2026,” the document stated. The Government says that the former could already reduce your tax bill by between £436 and £1,127 a year.

You can claim it if you’re married or in a civil partnership, living with your spouse or civil partner and one of you was born before April 6, 1935. For marriages before December 5, 2005, the husband’s income is used to work out the allowance. For marriage and civil partnerships after this date, the income of the highest earner is considered. If you and your partner were born on or after April 6, 1935, you may be able to claim Marriage Allowance instead.

This enables you to transfer £1,260 of your Personal Allowance – the amount you can earn before paying tax – to your husband, wife or civil partner.

This reduces their tax by up to £252 in the tax year.

Officials explain that, if you marry or register a civil partnership, you’ll get the Married Couple’s Allowance on a pro-rata basis for the rest of that tax year.

If one of you dies, or you divorce or separate, it continues until the end of the tax year.

It is possible to transfer your allowance to your spouse or civil partner.

The Government adds: “If you and your spouse or civil partner are separated through circumstance rather than through a decision to formally separate, you can still claim Married Couple’s Allowance.”

Ms Reeves faced a backlash yesterday after deciding to keep tax thresholds frozen until 2030/31 and levying national insurance on some pension contributions.

It comes as MPs have been urged to show “courage” by agreeing to end the pensions triple lock.

The country’s longest continuously serving MP described the policy as “unsustainable”, after Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled a 4.8% increase in the basic and new state pension next year.

Sir Edward Leigh told the Commons: “We all know that the triple lock is unsustainable. You cannot have a situation where people of my generation are consuming an ever-greater proportion of national wealth through the state pension.

“Frankly, our government never dared tackle it having brought it in because they knew that the Labour Party would crucify them at the ballot box.

“Now the Labour Party is caught in the same bind.

“The fact is, it is completely unfair on younger people if the burden of older people, through the triple lock, increases year by year.”