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.
Financial Times:” Tax warning on pension cash withdrawals”. Savers planning to take sizeable lump sums from their pension pots from April face bigger-than-expected tax bills as HM Revenue & Customs clamps down on the risk of underpaid tax. Click here to go directly to the article
Financial Times:” UK pensions reforms open door for scams”. Fraudsters will take advantage of reforms that give people more control over their retirement savings, industry figures and regulators fear.
Click here to go directly to the article
Financial Times:” Annuities cash-in idea has ‘potential’, say insurers”. Controversial proposals to allow retirement savers the right to sell their annuities for cash have received a boost after several of the country’s leading insurers said the idea ‘has potential’.. Click here to go directly to the article
Financial Times:” How to file a self-assessment tax return”. Tax does not have a reputation for generating excitement, but more than half a million taxpayers left it until deadline day last year to file their tax returns. About 20,000 left it until the final hour. Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Work hard for a better reward for thrift”. Savers are being urged to ditch their banks and building societies paying the lowest rates on cash Isa’s — even for a seemingly small boost.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” How to use your pension pot to buy-to-let”. There are three months to go before ‘pension freedom day’ on April 6. From that date, anyone cashing in a private pension plan will no longer be required to buy an annuity, an insurance contract that pays a guaranteed income for life; instead, they will be allowed to cash in their savings and use the money as they see fit. Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Millions face unexpected £2,000 tax”. Millions of taxpayers with more than one source of income could be sent backdated tax demands for £2,000 because of administrative errors at Revenue and Customs.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Taxman sends shock demands to landlords”. Revenue & Customs has been accused of unfairly targeting landlords by demanding backdated payments of national insurance contributions on rental property, amid concerns that increasing pressure to deliver a greater tax take is adversely affecting its conduct.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Doubt cast on quality of pension advice”. With less than three months before the biggest shake-up to pensions in living memory takes effect industry experts are warning that the government’s new guidance service will be unprepared and ineffective, leaving retirees in the dark and exposed to fraud.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Will the free guidance on pensions be any good?”. The retirement revolution is three months away, but the advice scheme is far from ready
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Check for hidden charges before heading to the exit “. Levy being applied by fund managers catches investors unaware
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The Times:” Families told to register now or face self-assessment fines”. First-timers in danger of missing tax deadline
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” Never done online self-assessment before? Four days left to avoid £100 fine “. The deadline for filing online self-assessment tax returns is Saturday, 31 January. But some taxpayers only have four days left
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” Millions with multiple incomes at risk of shock tax bills”. Taxpayers are being warned to check their tax codes for HMRC errors
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” Savers warned of fraud as pensions are set free”. Con artists could target pensioners in a bid to steal billions of pounds which, from April, will no longer have to be spent on annuities at the point of retirement
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” Sale of new pensioner bonds “hugely successful”, says George Osborne”. Chancellor says the Government’s new bonds has seen the “biggest opening sales of a retail bond sale in modern British history”
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” ‘Allow Isa savers to roll over unused tax-free allowance’”. Policy Exchange says unused portions of the £15,000 Isa allowance should be packaged into a £10,000 ‘Bonus Isa’
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” Pension loophole: Retire and keep saving £40,000 a year “. If you’re retiring soon and you want to keep saving more than £10,000 a year into your pension, this loophole could boost your limit to £40,000 a year
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 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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