Single to Married: You cannot submit a Joint return in the year of marriage. In the Personal Details screen, change the Marital status to Married, but leave the Assessment type as Single. In the Marital Details section, tick the “Tick if a change in marital circumstance occurred within the tax year” tick box. Fill out the information for the “Enter date of new status”, “Select previous marital status” and “Select previous assessment type” fields.
You can enter Personal Details for the spouse, such as the Date of Birth, First name, Maiden name and PPS number, but any income information entered for the spouse will cause the ROS comp to return an error.
How to claim the Year of marriage credit: To claim the credit you need to compare the tax liabilities for the client as a single person and as a married person. To do this create a scratch pad client (this is an exact copy of the current client’s data, but it cannot be submitted to Revenue). You can find the “Switch to scratch pad mode” button on the Client Dashboard screen, in the Client Details section.
In the scratch pad client, enter all of the information for the spouse, including income, and change the Assessment type to Joint. Once that is done, run the comps to figure out the liability and then compare it to the liability for the client when they are singly assessed. If the married tax liability is more beneficial, then you would work out how much of that the client is entitled to, for the number of months he is married during the year, and then claim that amount as the Year of marriage credit. The Year of marriage credit screen is found under Tax credits and reliefs.
Married to Separated: In the Personal Details screen, change the Marital status to Separated. The Assessment type will default to Single. Enter the date of separation and the details for the change of marital status.
When you click on Save, to exit the personal details screen, you will be given the option to delete any income for the spouse. If you click on Yes, the application will remove the Spouse’s income information for you. Note: Any Joint income records will not be deleted, those records will be changed from Joint to Self.
Married to Widowed: When you change the Marital Status to Widowed, the Assessment type will automatically default to Single. Enter the details for the Date of death and the change of marital status details.
When you click on Save to exit the Personal detail screen, you will be prompted to remove any of the Spouse’s income data.
Death of Non-Assessable Spouse:
Other than entering the date of death and change of marital circumstances details, nothing will change in the tax year. In the next tax year, the spouse’s personal details can be removed.
Death of Assessable Spouse:
Do a return as normal up to the date of death. Enter info into the Deceased Individual section in Personal Details. Create a second return for the Non-Assessable spouse and make sure that marital status is set to Widowed.
Married to Divorced: Change the Marital status to Divorced and the Assessment type automatically defaults to Single. Remove any reference for the spouse and enter the change of marital status details.
When you click on Save to exit the Personal detail screen, you will be prompted to remove any of the Spouse’s income data.