Britain’s pensions are in a right mess. Public sector workers may not be doing too badly, but the rest of us are going to suffer. So what is the Government doing about it? Why all …
The state of Britain’s pensions
Category: Personal Finance
It really does pay to complain
Twenty per cent of us don’t complain about unsatisfactory products or services according to Which? magazine. Yet we should: disappointing purchases cost us £8.3bn a year. A friend of ours recently complained about being given …
18 days till tax freedom
This year, the average UK taxpayer will work until the last day of May just to pay their share of the Government’s tax bill. ‘Tax Freedom Day’, as it has become known, used to fall …
How to cut the tax bill on your country pile
This week, the hundreds of thousands of people who own second homes in the UK face council tax bills that will have nearly doubled, says David Budworth in The Sunday Times. The Government has given …
Concerns over house prices fall on deaf ears
Alarms over spiralling house prices have been sounded so often in the past two years that no one takes much notice any more, said The Independent. The latest Halifax survey shows the average house in …
How to avoid burdening your heirs with inheritance tax
Gordon Brown has been making it much harder to avoid inheritance tax (IHT), particularly for those who own property that has risen in value, says Tax Tips & Advice. If the value of your house …
Find a tax haven that’s right up your street
If you are looking to invest, set up a business or retire abroad, evidently the climate and infrastructure of candidate countries will influence your decision, says Kathleen Peddicord in International Living. But you should also …
How life-cover policies could make you 9.9% a year
In the same way that traded endowment policies allow people to sell unwanted policies rather than accept the surrender value from the insurer, so the US Traded Life Interest market allows people to sell their …
Standard Life: should you take the money and run?
Standard Life’s plans to demutualise mean that millions of its policyholders could pocket windfalls of up to £2,000, says Lucy Warwick-Ching in the FT. Yet it may not make sense to hang on to (and …
How to save on capital gains – and get a yacht into the bargain
If you are having difficulty convincing your bank manager that buying a big boat is worthwhile, then do not despair, says the Schmidt Report. Where an individual or a company makes a capital gain from …