Tax forms are still too complex and need to be easier for people to fill in, according to a report from the National Audit Office (NAO).
It said that a simplification of the forms would lead to less errors made by the public and make tax assessments by officials easier and more accurate.
The NAO report on […]

Charities are losing out on nearly £1bn of funding every year because workers are not aware of the tax benefits of payroll giving, according to research from Oxfam.
Oxfam found that a third of employees in the UK would donate an average £9.60 a month through their salary if they knew how to do it. This […]

The monopoly enjoyed by supermarkets in the UK is allowing them to increase food prices at a higher rate than on the continent, according to a controversial report compiled for the Royal Bank of Scotland.
The cost of groceries in the UK is going up almost three times as quickly as in the rest of Europe and consumers are paying […]

Leading health insurer WPA is launching a new policy that covers the cost of life-saving cancer drugs unavailable from the NHS.
The policy - mycancerdrugs - charges a one-off annual fee based on the policyholder’s age, so a 40-year-old will pay £40 a year before 5% insurance tax (£42 with the tax added) for a lifetime […]

What is it with us Brits and property? We just cannot get enough of it and, now, the way we own it, and the places we own it in, are undergoing big changes as our obsession shows no signs of abating.
First of all, here are a few mind-bending stats. Mortgage lending in March this year was a record-breaking […]

The number of buy to let homeowners could double in the next three years, according to market research group Mintel.
Around 3% of homeowners are thinking of buying a second property to rent out by 2010, which would approximately double the number of private landlords in the UK to 2 million.
Mintel said that the trend towards […]

The latest house price figures from Nationwide Building Society show that they are still going up, despite three rises in interest rates since last August.
Prices rose 0.9% in April, compared with 0.5% in March, taking the annual rate of house price inflation to 10.2%, despite gloomy forecasts from bodies like the International Monetary Fund. The average house […]

UK current account holders are switching their bank accounts in ever-increasing numbers to register displeasure at ‘unfair’ bank charges.
Up to 12,700 customers a day will leave their current bank according to a financial website, with another 453,100 moving their accounts in the three months to March.
The banks are facing unprecedented scrutiny from consumer watchdogs and even Government […]