Today the Chancellor finally announced what the measure would be to compensate people who have lost out due to the income tax changes. They are going to give all basic rate taxpayers an extra £120 by raising the personal tax allowance by five times that amount. That was the solution to the problem that I [...]
Last week the government seemingly did a u-turn over the scrapping of the 10 pence rate of income tax, although it is far from clear what form the compensation will take for people on lower incomes who will lose out under the new tax regime.
It’s difficult to see how the government could have thought it [...]
It has emerged that customers in Northern Ireland who bank with the Nationwide building society, and who used cash machines belonging to Northern Bank, did not have the sums of money they withdrew debited from their accounts. The fault has existed since November, and 7,500 customers have been affected, withdrawing a total of £375,000 between [...]
My article on bank charges a few months ago prompted a few angry responses from people who claimed the current system of bank penalty charges is unfair.
Under the current system, people who go overdrawn – borrowing their bank’s money without permission – are charged fees. Some commentators have suggested that if these fees are [...]
For the first time, a bank has had its charges upheld in court. Since the Office of Fair Trading warned credit card providers last year that their penalty charges were excessive, causing all providers to cut fees to £12, people have been encouraged by numerous consumer groups to demand the refund of charges from bank [...]
The news that BT is introducing a “penalty” for people who pay by cash rather than direct debit almost passed me by last week. Apparently, evil BT are going to punish pensioners and the needy, are pushing up charges by £4.50 with a new surcharge, or hiking charges by £4.50 per quarter for customers who [...]
I wanted to write something about the collapse of the Farepak Christmas savings scheme, which left thousands of mainly low-income households without extra money to spend at Christmas.
However, I came across an excellent article in the Sunday Times by Merryn Somerset Webb, the editor of Money Week, which says most of the things I wanted [...]
Last weekend, one of the first cases of fraud involving “chip and pin” payment cards was reported to have forced Shell to suspend the system at its petrol stations.
A brief background to chip and pin: originally, all credit and debit cards carried information on a magnetic strip, and to make a payment, the cardholder had [...]