High-earning parents receiving childcare vouchers should check “little-known rules” before moving jobs, says Alexandra Goss in The Sunday Times. The vouchers are useful as they can be used for a range of childcare and are valid until a child is 15. They can help pay for nannies, after-school clubs and even boarding fees for independent schools. The vouchers are offered by about 40,000 employers and their value is deducted from pre-tax salary, which saves income tax and national insurance contributions.
But in April the system changed, so any higher-rate taxpayers – those paying 40% or 50% – could only receive £28 and £22 worth of vouchers per week respectively. Yet higher-rate taxpayers who applied before 5 April can still receive the £55 worth of vouchers per week that was awarded under the old system. If you beat that deadline, be careful about changing jobs, as the tax office will reclassify you as a new scheme entrant.
• Santander has become the latest bank to enter the cash-back card “battleground”, says the FT. Its new 123 credit card gives 1% cash back on consumer spending, 2% on spending in department stores and 3% on fuel. The bank reckons that the average customer could receive £176 each year in cash back. But as ever, there is a catch: the card comes with a £24 annual fee, so you’d need to use it heavily to start making savings. Moreover, the APR of 22% will punish those who fail to pay the balance each month. The petrol cash-back is also capped at £9 per month.
For those who use a credit card for their monthly food shopping, Capital One has a better offering, says the FT. It has a more competitive cash-back rate (up to 5%) and doesn’t charge an annual fee.
• Banks receive almost 10,000 complaints a day, according to the Financial Services Authority. Barclays is the most unpopular, clocking up a quarter of a million complaints in the last six months. That’s about one a minute. Most complaints were linked to the misselling of payment protection insurance (PPI). Lloyds TSB received 181,907 complaints, Santander 168,888 and NatWest 147,109.
• The Fraud Prevention Service says current-account misuse was up 12% in the first eight months of 2011. Of these cases, 20% related to people keeping money paid into their account by mistake.