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 15, 2014
ARTICLES
FINANCIAL TIMES
Financial Times:” Investors to lose tax break after renewable energy abuses”. Ministers have cracked down on exploitation of a tax break meant to help early-stage companies raise finance, as figures show investors poured more than £1bn into the Enterprise Investment Scheme last year. Click here to go directly to the article
Financial Times:” ‘Pensioner bonds’ to offer up to 4%”. New government savings bonds for the over-65s will offer interest rates of four per cent a year over three years and 2.8 per cent over one year, well above the rates available in the broader savings market.
Click here to go directly to the article
Financial Times:” Winners and losers in the state pension shake-up”. The biggest overhaul to the state pension in decades promises to deliver greater economic security and peace of mind to millions of future pensioners. But the historic reforms due to rollout in 2016 could also disappoint hundreds of thousands of people coming up to retirement, who are deeply confused by the changes or who believe they are in line for a more generous state pension.
Click here to go directly to the article
Financial Times:” Regulator demands changes over annuities”. The City regulator has recommended big changes to the annuity market and left the door open to compensation payments, after a damning report exposed poor sales practices by insurance firms. Click here to go directly to the article
THE TIMES
The Times:” Over-65s can soon earn 4% on savings “. Another big break for pensioners is on the horizon in the form of the long-awaited pensioner bonds, which will offer savers over the age of 65 better rates than anywhere else.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Play a waiting game with your pension”. Pension companies were criticised by the City watchdog again this week for shoddy practices around the sale of the annuities that many people still buy with their retirement pots to deliver a regular income for life. They aren’t adequately highlighting the benefits of shopping around for the best deal and in some cases are not informing people with high blood pressure and other common risk factors that they are eligible for higher rates with special ‘enhanced’ annuities.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Pensioners must wait for annuity clean-up “. Britain’s financial regulator has come under fire for repeatedly failing to clean up the pensions market, as fears grow of another mis-selling scandal when sweeping reforms take effect in April. Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Older borrowers turn to equity release as loans are rejected”. Desperate homeowners are turning to alternative money raising options after being told they are too old to take out conventional mortgages or renew deals.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Times:” Helpline hell as taxman admits service is not good enough”. People who phone HM Revenue & Customs can be put on hold for more than 40 minutes, or simply cut off, according to damning research published today by the consumer group Which?
Click here to go directly to the article
THE TELEGRAPH
The Telegraph:” Insulting rule on war medals and inheritance tax is finally scrapped “. Senseless tax rules meant only war medals for ‘valour’ attracted inheritance tax breaks, while others didn’t. Now those rules have been changed
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” Pensioner Bonds to pay 4pc and 2.8pc, NS&I confirms”. Government Pensioner Bonds will pay rates of almost double the best equivalent returns available elsewhere, National Savings has confirmed
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” I’ll definitely buy an annuity – and here’s why”. It’s been another bad week for annuities. The City watchdog unearthed a pile of evidence of misselling by insurers to people who were turning their pension savings into a lifetime income.
Click here to go directly to the article
The Telegraph:” Annuity mis-selling scandal: could it be as big as PPI?”. Comment: could the mis-selling by insurers of annuities result in compensation on the scale of payment protection insurance mis-selling, with savers in line for pay outs worth billions?
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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