VAT on private school fees to hammer ‘crisis-hit’ special needs provision January 23, 2025 Rachel Reeves’s controversial Budget decision to impose VAT on private school fees will hit the most vulnerable special educational needs students hardest, an expert has warned. The Chancellor confirmed at the Autumn Budget that fees are set to be taxed 20 per cent, which the government claims will benefit the Treasury to the tune of [...]
Bank of England policymaker: ‘Dragons of market discipline are alive and well’ January 23, 2025 "There have been spikes in yields in a number of individual countries in recent years, including the UK, that indicate the dragons of market discipline are alive and well," she said.
Reeves to water down non-dom changes as scale of exodus revealed January 23, 2025 Rachel Reeves has confirmed she will alter some of the more controversial non-dom reforms announced in the Autumn Budget. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Chancellor committed to tabling an amendment to the Finance Bill removing some of the most contentious elements of its changes to non-dom taxation. Answering a question from [...]
Food and drink deals spike as big firms look to strengthen positions January 23, 2025 M&A deal volumes in the food and drink sector saw a double digit rise last year, as buyers targeted undervalued companies in a bid to strengthen their positions in the market. Total deal volume rose to 151 deals in 2024, a 29.1 per cent increase from 117 deals in the previous year, while the total [...]
Could the Bank of England push the UK into recession? January 23, 2025 As the Bank of England scrambles to unwind the disastrous effects of quantitative easing, the hidden costs of this policy are becoming clear, says Damian Pudner Quantitative easing (QE) has long been the Bank of England’s monetary policy nuclear option. Launched in 2009 to save a collapsing financial system, it was supercharged during the pandemic, [...]
‘Pension death tax’ raid attacked by Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell January 22, 2025 Britain’s biggest wealth management firms have mounted a coordinated attack on Rachel Reeves’ plans to slap inheritance tax on undrawn pension pots today, describing the proposals as “flawed and potentially damaging” to grieving families. In a letter to the Chancellor, the bosses of Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell, Interactive Investor and Quilter, which collectively manage some [...]
Inheritance tax on farms: Lidl, Tesco and Aldi join demands for consultation January 22, 2025 Supermarkets Lidl, Tesco and Aldi have added their names to calls for a consultation over the government’s reforms to inheritance tax, citing concerns the changes would dent farmer confidence and choke off investment. In an unusual string of interventions, the retailers rode to the defence of farmers’ calls to pause the changes to Agricultural Property [...]
Man behind Netflix’s Bank of Dave gets a ‘kick’ catching scammers, and thinks Gen Z has got work wrong January 22, 2025 You might not have heard of Dave Fishwick, but Bank of Dave – the Netflix biopic about the unlikely bank manager from Burnley – was one of the most Googled films of 2023. That same year it topped the streamer’s charts, and now a second installation is on Netflix. Fishwick grew up with “nothing” and [...]
President Trump threatens to double tax rates for foreign firms January 22, 2025 Donald Trump has threatened to double tax rates for foreign nationals and companies in the US in what he said was a bid to hit back at “discriminatory” duties on American firms. The President set out a memo on his ‘America first’ trade policy on Monday which referred to an almost 100-year old element of [...]
Bank of England: Goldman Sachs expects deep interest rate cuts January 22, 2025 Markets are significantly underestimating the chance that the Bank of England will have to step up the pace of cutting interest rates, Goldman Sachs has argued. Traders anticipate just two interest rate cuts this year with one more cut priced in for 2026, which would leave the benchmark Bank Rate at 4.0 per cent. It [...]