Low capital gains rate and US location of funds mean tax bill of £508,000 much less than under top income rate of 45%
Rishi Sunak paid more than half a million pounds in tax in 2023 after making a £1.8m profit on his holding in a US investment fund, a summary of his tax affairs shows.
The prime minister published the document on Friday, showing he paid a tax bill of £508,308 in the financial year 2022-23 on overall earnings and gains of £2.23m.
Continue reading...Deputy governor Sarah Breeden also says firms must rein in profits as there is ‘some way to go’ to meet 2% inflation target
Victory in the war on inflation will require British workers to accept lower pay deals and companies to rein in their profits, a senior Bank of England policymaker has said.
Sarah Breeden, one of the central bank’s four deputy governors, said there was still “some way to go” before inflation would fall back to the 2% target set by the government for the Bank to achieve on a sustainable basis.
Continue reading...Lower mortgage rates lead to increased buyer and seller confidence, says Halifax
UK house prices rose 2.5% in the year to January, recording the biggest increase since January last year, as lower mortgage rates and fading inflationary pressures led to increased buyer and seller confidence, Halifax has said.
January marked the fourth consecutive monthly rise, with a 1.3% uplift on December, the UK’s biggest mortgage lender said, with the average home costing £291,000, £3,9000 more than in December.
Continue reading...Regulator says bank failed to properly implement Financial Services Compensation Scheme
HSBC has been fined £57m by the Bank of England’s financial stability arm for failing to protect customer deposits in the event of a banking collapse.
It is the second-highest fine imposed by the Bank’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and reflects the seriousness of the failings, the watchdog said. The highest fine was £87m, imposed on Credit Suisse last July.
Continue reading...Jeremy Hunt targets further reduction in ‘jobs tax’ in March budget
The government is considering handing workers another tax cut with a further reduction in national insurance, amid desperate attempts to move on from a campaign to destabilise Rishi Sunak by the Tory right.
With frustration within the cabinet that the Conservative party has been unable to free itself from internal warring over Sunak’s immigration plans and leadership, the prime minister and his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, are focusing on the tax cuts that will frame their election pitch.
Continue reading...While some banks and building societies scrap system, others report increase in usage by customers
While some banks are scrapping passbook savings accounts amid suggestions they are past their sell-by date, other providers have reported an increase in their usage as people turn to cash to help them manage the cost of living.
Newcastle building society said that in 2023 it issued about three times as many passbooks as it did in 2021, and that it is getting new customers on the back of decisions by rivals to axe them.
Continue reading...Driver was unaware he had to register French hire car with TfL’s collection agent even though it was emissions compliant
Christian Ducarre received three fines totalling nearly £11,000 after driving his French hire car to London to attend his son’s wedding. The car, which was fully compliant with ultra-low emission zone emissions rules, was mistakenly classed as a heavy goods vehicle and deemed to be in breach of the separate low emissions zone (Lez) and well as Ulez. Lez covers lorries, vans, buses and coaches, and fines are between £500 and £2,000 a day depending on the vehicle’s weight.
“I had checked that the car’s emissions standard was Euro 06 and so was not liable for the Ulez charge,” he said.
Continue reading...Exclusive: EU states accuse TfL of huge data breach over clean air zone penalties, with many given to compliant vehicles
Hundreds of thousands of EU citizens were wrongly fined for driving in London’s Ulez clean air zone, according to European governments, in what has been described as “possibly one of the largest data breaches in EU history”.
The Guardian can reveal Transport for London (TfL) has been accused by five EU countries of illegally obtaining the names and addresses of their citizens in order to issue the fines, with more than 320,000 penalties, some totalling thousands of euros, sent out since 2021.
Continue reading...Rightmove says average advertised price outside London is up 9.2% on a year ago despite fall in some regions
Average private rents in Great Britain have climbed to new record highs, though in some regions there has been a small fall in the amount new tenants are being asked to pay, data shows.
The typical advertised private rent outside London for new properties coming on to the market rose to a record £1,280 a calendar month in the final quarter of 2023, according to the property website Rightmove. That is £2 higher than the £1,278 figure recorded in the third quarter – a sign that rental growth is slowing.
Continue reading...Ofcom figures show Virgin attracted about 32 complaints per 100,000 customers compared with 18 for Now Broadband
Virgin Media is the UK’s most complained about broadband provider according to the latest figures, compounding woes for the firm, which is already under investigation by the communications regulator.
Figures released by Ofcom on Thursday showed that the number of complaints made about Virgin’s internet services between July and September were nearly double that of the next-most complained about provider, with Virgin attracting about 32 complaints per 100,000 customers compared with 18 for Now Broadband.
Continue reading...Hunt draws comparisons with Thatcher’s tax-slashing chancellor as he claims UK is ready for economic boom
Jeremy Hunt has compared himself to former tax-cutting chancellor Nigel Lawson, as he joined Rishi Sunak in teasing further potential cuts in the spring budget.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, the chancellor drew comparisons with the late Lawson, who was known for slashing personal taxation while serving in the Thatcher government.
Continue reading...Payments halted four times and left Eileen McGrath without income over Christmas
A retired teacher has had her pension payments stopped four times because her pension provider repeatedly refuses to accept that she is not dead.
Eileen McGrath, 85, was left without income over Christmas when Teachers’ Pensions, which administers payments on behalf of the UK government, wrongly matched her with a deceased stranger.
Continue reading...Lenders forecast biggest quarterly increase in missed repayments on credit cards and loans since 2009
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Britain’s biggest high street lenders expect the sharpest rise in defaults on unsecured lending since 2009, according to a Bank of England survey, as households come under growing pressure amid the cost of living crisis.
The figures from Threadneedle Street show banks expect a marked rise in the number of people who fail to meet repayments on credit cards, loans and other forms of unsecured borrowing over the next three months.
Continue reading...Ed Sheeran and Little Mix fans among those targeted by firm that resold on Viagogo and StubHub
Ticket touts acting out of “greed and dishonesty” sold tickets worth £6.5m to music fans, a court has heard, as a woman known as the “Ticket Queen” pleaded guilty to fraudulent trading nearly seven years after being named in an Observer investigation.
TQ Tickets Ltd, owned by Maria Chenery-Woods of Norfolk, used fake identities to hoover up large numbers of tickets for acts such as Ed Sheeran and Little Mix, prosecutors for National Trading Standards said.
Continue reading...UK’s mobile and broadband firms were accused of ‘greedflation’ last year by the Guardian
BT has become the first major telecoms company to scrap controversial above-inflation price rises for mobile and broadband customers – but not before pushing through a final increase this year.
The owner of mobile operator EE has moved to address the pressure on consumers from rising household costs during the cost of living crisis, after telecoms companies were criticised for increasing bills.
Continue reading...Thousands of concerned parents reportedly struggling to sign up for flagship offering that starts in April
A flagship government childcare scheme is at risk of “falling apart” with parents struggling to access new free hours and nurseries in the dark about if they can afford to provide care, according to charities.
Parents’ groups have accused the government of planning the new free offering “on the back of a fag packet”, with thousands of “furious” parents struggling to sign up for the scheme, which starts in April.
Continue reading...FCA to examine whether consumers have been charged inflated prices for loans on new and secondhand cars
Millions of drivers could be in line for a payout, it has been claimed, after the UK financial watchdog opened an investigation into whether consumers had been unfairly charged inflated prices for loans on new and secondhand cars.
The Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday that it had decided to examine whether a compensation scheme was needed to deal with alleged large-scale mis-selling in the £50bn-a-year motor finance sector.
Continue reading...Customers can collect their parcels and try on items in one trip during trial at La Poste branches
It is an increasingly common irritant of modern life. You order an item of clothing online; you wait with anticipation for it to arrive, and five minutes after it has arrived you’re packaging it up because it doesn’t fit.
For shoppers in France, however, the national post office may have the answer – or at least a way of making the process less logistically challenging. It is experimenting with in-store changing rooms to cater to people who want to quickly return purchases they do not want.
Continue reading...PM sets up possibility of income tax coming down in March and says control of welfare is a priority
Rishi Sunak has said he wants to cut taxes for working people further this year, possibly cutting welfare payments to fund it.
The prime minister said on Sunday his priority before the budget in March would be further tax cuts, which he said would entail stricter controls on public spending and benefits.
Continue reading...Unless from a wealthy family, internships for many mean chipping away at savings and cutting back on essentials
By day, he was mostly an unpaid intern, getting a glimpse of day-to-day life in university research as he networked with potential employers.
Nightfall would often send him rushing to his second shift; this time, at a library in the suburbs of Paris as he strives to pay his bills.
What we see is that, many times, they [internships] are actually replacing entry-level jobs
Tea Jarc, of the European Trade Union Confederation
Unpaid internships have really become a barrier for the social mobility of young people
María Rodríguez Alcázar, of the European Youth Forum
Continue reading...