The high marginal tax rates created by phasing out the personal allowance are back in the news. ‘A million to pay 60% income tax within years,’ ran a recent headline in The Sunday Telegraph. The next day The Times picked up on the same story with the article ‘Inflation may leave million more workers paying 60% tax’. Whether either article counts as ‘news’ is debatable. The 60% income tax rate (or 61.5% on earnings in Scotland) has been around, in one form or another, since 20

New data from HMRC reveals there are now over six million people paying higher or additional rate tax in the UK. Source: HMRC. In recent years, the end of June has been the time for HMRC to issue its annual statistics on taxpayer numbers. This series is more up to date than some of HMRC’s releases and includes a projection for the current tax year. The latest set of data received more press attention than usual for several reasons: · The number of income tax payers jumped by

At the end of September, the old paper £50 and £20 notes will no longer be legal tender. But has cash in general had its day? In 2010, 56% of all payments were made in cash, according to UK Finance. Five years later, the proportion had fallen to 45%. Cash was already rapidly losing favour by 2019 – the number of transactions in that year was less than half the level of 2012. Then along came Covid-19. The pandemic hit cash use in three ways: 1. Lockdown saw many shops shut

A new report by the Association of British Insurers says a significant increase in the minimum contributions to workplace pensions is required. October will mark the tenth anniversary of the introduction of automatic enrolment (AE) into workplace pensions. The latest body to publish its thoughts on the past ten years and what needs to happen over the next decade is the Association of British Insurers (ABI). The ABI notes that “AE has turned the tide on decades of falling part