Isa allowance hiked to £15,000 March 19, 2014 SAVERS can stash 30 per cent more cash in tax free savings accounts every year after chancellor George Osborne ripped up the rule book on individual saving accounts (Isas) yesterday. The Isa allowance, currently set at £11,520 for the current tax year, will jump to £15,000 on 1 July, the biggest allowance hike since Isas [...]
Q and A: Twice as Nisa: 6 questions answered March 19, 2014 So what is all this about a Nisa? I thought that was a shop? No, Nisa is short for New Individual Savings Account, the Treasury’s rebranded Isa which it unveiled yesterday. The Nisa savings allowance limit from July 1 2014 will be £15,000 a year. Is the £15,000 Nisa savings allowance really such a big [...]
No death tax for crisis staff March 19, 2014 FIREFIGHTERS, police officers and ambulance staff could be excluded from paying inheritance tax when death is caused by injury while on duty in a review announced yesterday. Chancellor George Osborne said the change would be considered to help those who: “give their lives protecting us”. Inheritance tax, which has a current threshold of £325,000, is [...]
Public sector pension plan faces overhaul March 19, 2014 A POLICY to tackle a £1bn black hole in the public sector pension bill was unveiled by George Osborne during his Budget speech yesterday. The chancellor announced plans to make government departments foot the bill for a greater share of pensions, after a shortfall across the teachers’, civil service and NHS pension schemes that runs [...]
Pensioner bonds unveiled to help ageing savers March 19, 2014 PENSIONERS will be able to buy high yielding saving bonds from January next year, amid vote-winning moves by government to help ageing savers hit by historically low interest rates. National Savings and Investment plans to issue up to £10bn worth of bonds paying interest rates closer to the rate of inflation. The plans for the [...]
Tax avoiders to be forced to pay off bills sooner March 19, 2014 THE TAXMAN will now demand faster payments of income tax and national insurance from people using disclosed avoidance schemes, under further steps to fight the practice. The new rules mean HM Revenue & Customs will hold onto disputed tax while the individual case is ongoing. Osborne referred to the changes as giving HMRC “modern powers to [...]
Personal allowance and 40p threshold to rise for two years March 19, 2014 THE PERSONAL allowance for income tax will rise to £10,500 from 2015-16, as the threshold for the 40 per cent rate starts to climb. The tax-free slab has risen in each of the coalition’s Budgets, and chancellor George Osborne yesterday confirmed that it will be increased from the current £9,440 this financial year to £10,000 [...]
Clampdown on profit transfers from UK firms March 19, 2014 A CRACKDOWN on tax avoidance in yesterday’s Budget will extend a scheme to limit avoidance through transferring profits internationally. Chancellor George Osborne said that HM Revenue & Customs would try to net more firms that it suspects are moving profit overseas to avoid UK tax, extending a move taken in December’s Autumn Statement. The change comes [...]
Osborne doubles annual investment fund for companies to £500,000 until end of 2015 March 19, 2014 THE MAJOR change for business investment in the Budget comes from a doubling of the investment allowance, which rises to £500,000 from next month. The annual investment allowance has been on a roller coaster ride in the past four years. In its 2010 Budget, the previous government raised it from £50,000 to £100,000. By the [...]
Sustained bank levy takes £3bn from lenders March 19, 2014 BANKS will cough up almost £3bn in bank levy payments every year for the forseeable future, as the sums on which the tax is based are re-calculated. The chancellor did not increase the rate yesterday, as he had already hiked it to 0.156 per cent of big banks’ balance sheets, the levy’s seventh rise since [...]