Every individual taxpayer is entitled to a personal allowance.
The personal allowance is an amount you can receive without having to pay any tax and can be set against any type of income. Where an individual's total income is less than the allowance, their tax liability is reduced to nil. However any unused part of the personal allowance cannot be transferred to any other person. Details of how the married couple's allowance can be allocated between husband and wife are given in section 2, paragraph 5. The amount of the personal allowance depends on the age of the individual taxpayer.