Moneyblog

As Philip Hammond rose to the despatch box to deliver his Spring Statement, the Chancellor must have felt like someone who wanted to talk about the funny noise the radiator was making half-way through extra-time of England’s World Cup semi-final last summer. Everyone’s attention was understandably elsewhere. If he was feeling mischievous he could have probably abolished inheritance tax, or slapped VAT on children’s clothes, safe in the knowledge that amid all the Brexit chaos it would have been safely forgotten by about 2pm. And yet, even by his own lugubrious standards, Hammond surely missed an opportunity. There is nothing wrong with a bit of small-scale fiddling – a review

I am never sure what I think about tax havens. On the one hand, there is something terribly depressing about places whose raison d’être is tax avoidance. On the other, what the EU calls ‘unfair tax competition’ is better described simply as ‘tax competition’. It would be a very bad thing if powerful nations could abolish competitive pressure to keep taxes down. Whatever one thinks of them, tax havens themselves have laws. In the case of the Crown dependencies, the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, they are ancient entities, governed by the laws passed by their own parliaments, not by the House of Commons. As was also shown by

Thinking of remortgaging your home, or perhaps a second property? Here are some of the best remortgage rates on the market at the moment, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

A common opinion in today’s media is that millennials have it all – flexibility in jobs, a greater freedom to travel, and all the information they need at their fingertips. However, if you dive a bit deeper into the statistics, things don’t appear to be as rosy as we first thought. Today’s young face longer commutes than those before them and are confronted by an increasingly out of reach property sector. Over the last 20 years we’ve seen nothing short of a collapse in homeownership amongst younger people. In 1995-96, sixty five percent of those with incomes in the middle twenty percent for their age owned their own home. In 2015-16

Banks are trying to change our ways. Our own recently wrote to tell us that it will no longer send us cheque books unless we positively demand them. And now a battle is beginning to close down cash machines. It is reported that there are none at all in Stoke; and when I accosted an ATM in St James’s this week, it flashed up a message saying it would close in three days’ time. I suppose this is because having cash is becoming like smoking — a slightly furtive and discreditable minority occupation. We tap, so far fewer machines are needed. It makes me uneasy. In theory, there is no

Most bank accounts on the market offer next-to-nothing in terms of interest, but some are better than others! Here are some of the best easy access accounts on the market right now, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

There’s a lesson for all boardrooms — and an echo of the lost era of big-bucks, big-ego banking — in the story of Santander’s withdrawal of its job offer to Andrea Orcel. The Italian-born former UBS and Merrill Lynch investment banker was named last September as the next chief executive of the Spanish giant that is Europe’s fifth-largest commercial banking group; but during his ‘gardening leave’ between employers, the deal fell apart. The amount Orcel was demanding in compensation for deferred rewards at UBS — some reports say €50 million — turned out to be way over the top for the Spaniards. And having previously known him only as a

This week’s Best Buys are one year fixed-rate ISAs. Even if you have opened one in the previous tax year, you can still open another, so if you have some spare cash to hand it’s always worthwhile taking a look at what rates are on offer. Here are some of the best, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.