What are the tax benefits of getting married? Ricky Gervais says he might finally wed partner
Ricky Gervais reveals tax issue might lead him to finally marry his partner Jane Fallon after 44 years
Ricky Gervais has said he could finally marry his partner, Jane Fallon, for a tax reason after years of saying he would never have a wedding.
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The actor and comedian has described his other half, whom he has been with since 1982, as his life partner, but his atheism has prevented him from getting married.
"There's no point in us having an actual ceremony before the eyes of God because there is no God," he said in a 2010 interview.
However, Gervais, 65, has now said that he might marry Fallon, also 65, because of a prospective inheritance tax bill.
“It’s horrible, isn’t it? I’ve got to get around to marrying before I die,” he told Saga magazine this week.
“And that will be the reason I marry. But if it wasn’t for that… Why? It’s mad. How more married can you be? We share all our money, we’ve been living together for 40 years. Some marriages don’t last a year.”
Read also: Ricky Gervais leads outpouring of support for The Office star Lucy Davis after cancer diagnosis
Gervais's statement led to a debate around the place of marriage on Tom Swarbrick's LBC show on Tuesday.
Louise told LBC: "I suppose the question is, why do married people get tax breaks in the first place? You know, because it seems to me that in effect, single people are in effect subsidising the married couples."
Priya Sanhi-Nicholas, of the Equality Trust, told LBC: "When Ricky Gervais goes against his own values to pass on money and assets to someone else, that's a matter for him and his own conscience, but when we think about one of the reasons to have an inheritance tax is to address inequality."
What are the tax benefits of getting married?
Gervais has cited inheritance tax as his primary motivation for getting married.
The tax is applied at 40% on anything left in an estate over the threshold of £325,000, rising to £5,000 for a main residence left to a direct descendant, and must be paid to HMRC within six months of the death to avoid penalties.
The benefit of getting married is that partners can leave their assets to each other without needing to pay the inheritance tax bill, whereas non-married couples cannot do this.
The rules also allow you to pass your unused inheritance tax allowance to your spouse,
Other tax benefits include Marriage Allowance, where you can transfer £1,260 of your Personal Allowance to your husband, wife or civil partner, without paying tax.
You can move savings and investments to a spouse to make the most of tax-free allowances. This means that you can share your tax-free capital gains profit margin of £3,000 with your spouse to save money.