Synopsis: Short summaries of articles we think you will find useful from some of the weekends broadsheets. At the end of each summary is a link to take you directly to the relevant article. Please see Helpful Hints at the end of the bulletin.
Date posted: Monday, February 03, 2014
ARTICLES
Financial Times:” Lib Dems set to back ‘triple lock’ for UK state pensions”. The Liberal Democrats are poised to announce that they support the ‘triple lock’ guarantee on rises in the state pensions beyond 2015 – a move likely to signal further steep cuts to the rest of the welfare state after the next election.
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Financial Times:” Industry acts on pension busting”. A working group has been established to help protect savers from the growing problem of ‘pension liberation’ scams, where scheme members are encouraged to access their funds before the age of 55 without being told that doing so will expose them to punitive tax charges.
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Financial Times:” ‘Boost state pension’ with AE cash”. Older workers are being encouraged to consider using small pension pots built up in a company pension to buy a better retirement income from the state.
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Financial Times:” Definition of ‘average’ annuity makes a material difference”. The insurance industry has been accused of ‘playing clever’ with figures to inflate the value of annuities achieved by most savers.
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Financial Times:” Poor value annuities ‘should be banned'”. Pension providers should be barred from selling annuities to customers going into retirement if their rates are very uncompetitive, it was argued this week.
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Financial Times:” Corporation tax revenues from big business plunge”. Britain’s biggest companies paid more in national insurance contributions than corporation tax for the first time last year, marking a drop in profits and a historic shift in the way companies are taxed.
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The Times:” Will you benefit from the pension top-up?”. Investigate the alternatives for providing a comfortable retirement
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The Times:” Briefing: Families’ outstanding benefits”. The number of families that have failed to pay back child benefit has hit 99,000. Families where one parent earns more than £50,000 lost their right to claim after January last year. Many carried on receiving money and should have paid it back via tax returns.
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The Times:” Venture capital trusts tempt small investors”. MONEY is flowing into venture capital trusts as investors search for alternative tax breaks — with £200m predicted to be invested in the next three months.
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The Times:” Thousands offered tax return reprieve”. Thousands of taxpayers who are required to file online tax returns by midnight but cannot meet the deadline can avoid the £100 penalty for late filing by contacting the Revenue by 8pm today.
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The Times:” Should you go Dutch with your pension?”. If the Government’s plan to radically transform the pension market by introducing Dutch-style schemes has left you bemused, Times Money is here to help. We also explain how you can make the most of a separately announced top-up scheme to boost your state pension.
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The Telegraph:” Payments to HMRC fail on tax deadline “. HMRC’s banking service, operated by Citibank, appeared to buckle under the weight of £1m-a-minute tax payments on the self-assessment deadline today
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HELPFUL HINTS
1. LINKS TO ARTICLES:
We have now provided direct links to the articles referred to in the article. These can be accessed by click on the “To go directly to the article click here” at the end of each article summary
2. REQUIREMENT TO SUBSCRIBE TO SITES:
As some Opus Gold users will be aware, many of the broadsheet newspapers that are traditionally covered in our From the Papers bulletin, are changing (or have changed) their free online access to articles.
Currently the Financial Times and Weekend Financial Times only allows access to view 8 articles a month free, then requiring the user to subscribe to their online service. From 1 July 2010 The Times, Saturday Times and Sunday Times articles are no longer available for free online. Instead a daily or monthly fee will have to be paid to access the articles.
We are aware of the inconvenience this will cause to our users. Unfortunately, due to the stringent copyright rules enforced by the newspapers we are not allowed to copy the articles onto our bulletin to make them available to Opus Gold users, thus our only option is to put a direct link to the article on the newspapers own website.
Although we will continue to produce From the Papers bulletins linking to these articles, users should be aware that access to many will now be blocked unless a personal subscription to the newspapers site is taken.
Once again we apologise for this inconvenience but this is something outside of our control.
QUICK LINKS
FINANCIAL TIMES, TIMES + SUNDAY TIMES, TELEGRAPH + SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, GUARDIAN + GUARDIAN WEEKLY + MONEY OBSERVER + OBSERVER, INDEPENDENT + INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, SCOTSMAN + SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY + EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS, DAILY MAIL + MAIL ON SUNDAY + (LONDON) EVENING STANDARD + THIS IS MONEY.
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