Subject to consultation, from April next year anyone who wants to take their whole pension in cash at 55 can. 25% of that will be tax free (as now) and the rest will be taxed …
Critics of Osborne’s new pension rules are talking complete nonsense
Category: Blog
Russia – plenty of bad news, but it’s in the price
We started suggesting that Russian stocks were cheap enough to buy last year. It seemed to us at the time that given the choice of buying, say US equities, at cyclically adjusted p/e ratios way above long-term …
Eight things we’d like to see in the Budget
Here’s a list of things we’d like to see in the Budget. We aren’t really expecting any of them, but we are hopeful of being proven too cynical (this doesn’t happen often). Do add any …
Scottish independence: placing blind trust in a meaningless question
There was a discussion on Radio 4 this morning about a possible referendum on the EU. One contributor made the excellent point that asking a simple “in or out” question without more information offered on …
A wealth tax worth paying
I have written in a few places recently about the pensions ‘lifetime allowance’ or LTA – about how easy it is to hit the limit, and about how the system is remarkably biased towards those with …
A wealth tax worth paying
I have written in a few places recently about the pensions ‘lifetime allowance’ or LTA – about how easy it is to hit the limit, and about how the system is remarkably biased towards those with …
Japan’s pay freeze may be about to thaw
Wages in Japan may be about to start rising as inflation creeps up. Could we be next? I wrote here earlier in the week that one of the big changes in Japan is the sense …
The numbers just don’t add up for an independent Scotland
The Scottish government has just released its Government Expenditure and Revenue report for 2011/12. You should probably take a look at it, because it is the best guide we have to how the finances of …
House prices are bound to ‘readjust’. But not yet
I’m having an interesting week. I spent Tuesday flying around Scotland and Northumberland in a helicopter looking at forests and windfarms (more on this next week), and now I am hanging around at the National …
The lie behind performance fees
Regular readers will know that we aren’t much in favour of performance fees paid to fund managers. We figure that management fees are paid in the expectation that the manager will do his best to …