FROM THE PAPERS
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, December 08, 2014
ARTICLES
FINANCIAL TIMES
Financial Times:” Pension annuity system attacked by UK report”. Tens of thousands of UK pensioners are losing out by investing in an annuity, with a study showing they do not even receive all the money they invested, let alone any interest. They need to live significantly longer than expected for the products to be worthwhile, it concludes.Click here to go directly to the article
Financial Times:” The art of making a little go a long way”. In previous Budgets and Autumn Statements, the chancellor has stated up front that the overall impact was ‘fiscally neutral’ — in other words, that cuts in one place were balanced by increases elsewhere.
Click here to go directly to the article
Financial Times:” Stamp duty now merely a ‘bad’ tax”. Britain’s stamp duty regime will continue to distort the housing market in spite of radical reforms unveiled by George Osborne this week, according to an influential think-tank that said a ‘very bad tax’ had been turned merely into a ‘bad tax’. Click here to go directly to the article
THE TIMES
The Times:” Stamp duty cut will be lost in house price boom”. More than 600,000 homes could fall into the higher tax bands, triggering bigger bills as the market soars
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Death and taxes: everything you need to know”. How do the chancellor’s changes affect you?
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Wealthy non-doms face higher charges”. An exclusive club of wealthy individuals who live in Britain but are ‘not resident’ for tax purposes are to face a significantly higher annual charge if they want to avoid paying tax on their worldwide assets.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Stealth tax trap swells numbers paying 40%”. Nobody would pay higher-rate tax if they earned less than £53,000 had the government followed the long-held tradition of raising the threshold in line with inflation every year, it can be revealed today.
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The Times:” Isas and pensions battle for supremacy”. The latest round of rule changes in the autumn statement, making both pensions and individual savings accounts (Isas) more attractive, has prompted investors to ask which is the better bet.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Increase in tax evasion tip-offs aids Osborne”. Nearly 90,000 people last year tipped off Revenue & Customs about neighbours, ex-partners and colleagues whom they suspected of tax evasion, Times Money can reveal, and the chancellor hopes many more informants follow their lead after he launched his latest tax crackdown.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” R&D boost welcomed by small business owners”. Many small business owners believe that the improvements in business rate and research and development (R&D) tax relief, announced by the chancellor in the autumn statement, will make a big difference to their companies.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Help for squeezed middle with £190 extra “. Squeezed middle-earners can look forward to up to £190 extra in their pay packets next year, the small print of the autumn statement revealed, after George Osborne announced the biggest increase in the threshold at which workers’ pay the higher rate of income tax for five years and an unexpected rise in the personal allowance.
Click here to go directly to the article
THE TELEGRAPH
The Telegraph:” Thousands of savers ‘sacked’ by their financial advisers”. Thousands of savers have been “sacked” by their independent financial advisers for not having enough money. Nearly a fifth of advisers or IFAs – 5,400 of the estimated 30,000 operating in the UK – have admitted to ‘formally’ asking clients to leave in the past year, research suggests. It follows a shake-up of the rules two years ago that forced advisers and advisory firms to charge clients rather than rely on earning commission from the investments they sell.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” Steve Webb tells ‘livid’ pensioners: give us your money for a better interest rate”. Liberal Democrat pension’s minister says retired savers should invest in the government’s new pensioner bonds if they want the best interest rates
Click here to go directly to the article
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 Techlink 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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