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Money expert Martin Lewis is urging households to make use of four tax-free allowances that you can use all at once to earn up to £38,570 in a single tax year from various sources without owing any tax on it at all.

Martin returned in an episode of The Martin Lewis Show Live on ITV1 and ITVX where he took viewers through various legal methods of avoiding tax by making the most of the allowances available each year.

Martin explained that, through a combination of the Personal Allowance and various savings allowances currently offered by HMRC, households can earn and save as much a £38,570 in a single tax year, protected from tax using four different allowances you can claim all in one year.

Martin said: "Are you using all four of your Savings Interest Tax Allowances?

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"The first one, the Personal Allowance, £12,570 a year that you can earn from any source: earnings, rent, savings interest, without paying tax on. Most people get that, unless you start earning £100,000 and it starts getting taken away.

"You all know about the Personal Allowance? Yep. The next one, not that many people know about is called the Starting Rate for Savings.

"This is another £5,000 of savings interest you can earn a year on top of the Personal Allowance, and this is designed for people who have low work earnings but high interest on savings, often people who are retired.

"For every £1 you earn above this allowance, you lose £1 on your Starting Savings Rate. So imagine you earn £13,570, you can now only have £4,000 of tax-free interest in your savings due to the starting savings rate.

"And by the time you earn from work, £17,570, this is gone. So it's only for people with low work earnings and high interest on savings.

"Next, we get the big one many of you will know about. The Personal Savings Allowance, and this is on top of those two.

"This is the fact that a basic rate taxpayer, 20% taxpayer, can earn £1,000 a year of interest in any form of savings at all, without paying tax on it.

"Now the top savings accounts right now pay about £4,5000, so you need about £22,000, just a little over £22,000 in the top savings account, before you earned over £1,000 interest. So if you've got less than that, you're not going to be paying tax on your savings interest because it's tax free. It's within your Personal Savings Allowance.

"Higher rate of taxpayers paid £500 a year of interest they can make each year tax-free. It's about £11,000 saved at the top rate.

"If you're an additional rate taxpayer earning above £125,000, you don't get one of these."

In total, these three allowances would let you earn £12,570 tax free, then save another £6,000 without paying tax on the interest, for a total of £18,570 protected from tax.

Then, you can add £20,000 of tax-protected savings using a Cash ISA.

Martin added: "And then, you get what we're talking about today. A Cash ISA, a savings account you don't pay tax on. You can put up to £20,000 a tax year in, as you know, and crucially, the interest earned in a Cash ISA does not count towards the Personal Allowance. Does not count towards the Starting Rate for Savings. Does not count towards the Personal Savings Allowance.

"It is totally separate from that. I should note Premium Bonds work roughly the same way but it's not an annual allowance it's a maximum £50,000 you can put in, in total.

"Those are the main ways you can save without paying tax on them."

The Martin Lewis Money Show Live, Tuesday March 10 episode is still available to watch via ITVX.