EM3595 - Recalculating profits: private side - capital statements: spouse's, civil partner’s or domestic partner's assets or income

You are unlikely to achieve a complete understanding of a customer's capital position, without considering their financial relationship with their spouse, civil partner or domestic partner. You must remember however that any information relating to their financial affairs must be treated as confidential.

For further guidance about the confidentiality of information provided by spouses or partners, see EM1830.

Spouses, civil partners or domestic partners of customers under enquiry may be prepared to supply voluntarily the information that you need about the assets and spending.

If both parties agree, it will usually be easier to prepare a joint capital statement.

But if you are preparing a capital statement for the customer alone, you will need to reflect

as expenditure

• money given by the customer to the spouse or partner to fund spending or assets, or the cost of assets which have been gifted

as income

• money given to the customer to fund spending or assets, or the value of assets gifted to him or her

as assets

• any assets given by the spouse or partner to the customer, plus any loans to the spouse or partner or money held by them on the taxpayer’s behalf

as liabilities

• any loans from the spouse or partner or money held by the taxpayer on their behalf.

If you need to verify your customer's contribution to spending and the purchase of joint assets you may need to check whether the spouse or partner is able to meet their contributions. Depending on the circumstances, you may also need details of all of the spouse’s or partner’s assts.