more time given for self assessment

The Inland Revenue has extended the deadline for people to complete their self assessment tax returns after its website crashed.

It is giving people an extra 24 hours to get in their forms and any tax owing without being liable for a £100 fine.

The

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self-assessment website collapsed at around 10.30am as thousands of people rushed to get their returns back before the midnight deadline.

Cosumer victory a year on

This April will mark a year since the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) forced providers to reduce their fines for late or missing credit card payments from £20 plus to £12. But whether ot not this amounts to a ‘victory’ for the consumer, is questionable. Since then credit card companies have been sneakily introducing new credit card fees and increases to rates in a bid to recoup around £1bn in lost revenues.

house prices dipped 0.1% in January

House prices dipped 0.1% in January, declining for a third consecutive month as the market cooled, and taking the annual rate of price inflation to its lowest level in two years, Nationwide said.

banks still claiming bank charges are legal

Banks use a “strange language” to pretend their overdraft charges are fair, the High Court has been told. Brian Doctor QC, for the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), said the language of bank contracts did not reflect “objective reality”.

He was addressing the court on the eighth day of a key test case to decide whether the OFT can rule on the validity of overdraft charges.

Seven banks and the Nationwide Building Society deny their charges are unfair.

 

They agreed to the test case to clarify their legal position after a mass of litigation, which has seen hundreds of thousands of consumers claim refunds totalling hundreds of millions of pounds.

‘Strange world’

Barristers for the lenders have told the judge hearing the case, Mr Justice Andrew Smith, that current account customers get a package of services for which they are charged a package of prices.

But Mr Doctor accused the banks’ QCs of trying to “cast a spell” over the court.

“We are entering a strange world in which the banks speak a strange language, in which customers are deemed to have done one thing by doing another,” he said.

Mr Doctor argued that some banks have, in the past year, been rewriting their contracts for running a current account to avoid any application of the 1999 unfair terms in consumer contracts regulations.

Co-operative insurance

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secret savings

Britons have increased their savings levels 40-fold during the past 50 years, says National Savings and Investment (NS&I). The amount put aside by savers has soared from £1.1bn in 1957 in today’s money to £43.9bn in 2007, according to NS&I’s Century of Saving report.

It said the increase was a result of rising affluence and an increasingly sophisticated approach to savings.

The report predicts the proportion of income set aside will grow further.

It expects the so-called “savings ratio” to increase from the 5% level seen in 2006 to 7.5% over the long term. The ratio was 1.5% in 1957.

gold an attractive asset

Gold and platinum have both hit fresh all-time highs for the third straight trading day, lifted by expectations of a further cut in US interest rates. In Tuesday trading, gold was $929.40 an ounce, while platinum touched $1,735.

As fears about a US recession continue, gold is seen as an attractive asset given the current economic uncertainty.

The weak dollar - which may fall again if US rates are cut - also boosts gold as it makes the metal cheaper for holders of other currencies.

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