Your April pay may look much the same as March’s, but it is worth giving your pay slip a close look. If you are an employee, your April pay slip is always worth checking, even if you pay little attention to the other eleven you receive over a year. The items to check include: Salary: Many employers change pay rates from 1 April, often coinciding with the start of their new financial year. If you were notified of a pay increase in March, it is worth making sure the number on t

Buy-to-let investors will be hit by another notch up of the tax ratchet. Source Nationwide When George Osborne announced in his summer 2015 Budget a variety of tax changes aimed at discouraging buy-to-let (BTL) investment, they came as a surprise. To ease their impact, the then Chancellor phased in the most significant reform, a revised treatment of interest relief, over four years and deferred its start date to April 2017. Anecdotal evidence suggests some BTL investors did n

UK inflation fell below 2% for the first time in two years. January 2019 saw the lowest level of inflation since January 2017, with the rate recorded at 1.8%. The data was slightly better than had been expected, with the CPI rate falling to below the Bank of England’s 2% target for the first time in two years. One of the major contributors to the fall from December’s 2.1% rate was the drop in gas and electricity prices prompted by the introduction of the price cap on “standar