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HMRC will send out cheques to some people who make backdated claims (Image: Getty)<\/p>\n
A little-known rule to boost your tax-free Personal Allowance means you could be sent a cheque for \u00a31,000 by HMRC<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Personal Allowance has been locked at \u00a312,570 since 2021. That\u2019s the amount you can earn without paying any tax on it, and every \u00a31 earned beyond that threshold is usually taxed at 20%, or 40% or 45%, depending on how much beyond the threshold you go.<\/p>\n And the threshold is set to be stuck in place for years longer, after the Government announced it would extend the existing lock until 2031.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why earners need to use the fully legal tax<\/a> allowances available to them to maximise their tax-<\/a>free earnings, as inflation pushes more and more people into paying more tax<\/a> beyond the frozen threshold, a concept known as \u2018fiscal drag\u2019.<\/p>\n READ MORE: New HMRC tax-free Personal Allowance limit confirmed – started in April <\/a><\/p>\n READ MORE: Older state pensioners handed bumper \u00a31844.32 Friday AP payments in May <\/a><\/p>\n One such allowance is the Marriage Tax Allowance, a handy perk for married couples (or those in civil partnerships). Not only does this allow you to claim money off your tax bill by raising your Personal Allowance in the current tax year, it also allows you to backdate the claim for up to four more years, which will result in a cheque from HMRC<\/a>, or a bank transfer payment.<\/p>\n Speaking on an episode of The Martin Lewis Money Show Live on ITVX in March, money mogul Martin explained that in order to benefit from this perk, you need to be married or in a civil partnership and one person needs to earn under the \u00a312,570 threshold, while the other earns above it.<\/p>\n The lower earner then transfers some of their unused tax allowance to the higher earner.<\/p>\n Martin said: \u201cSo here\u2019s how it works, it has to be a non-taxpayer, so that\u2019s someone earning under the \u00a312,570 a year Personal Allowance, the amount that you can earn each year tax-free, married to a basic rate 20% taxpayer.<\/p>\n