Tax, energy bills, pensions and broadband

HMRC is chasing almost £2 billion that may be owed in taxes by Britain’s wealthiest people, according to the public spending watchdog.

The National Audit Office said HMRC’s specialist unit recovered £416 million in 2015 from 6,500 high net worth individuals’ with wealth of more than £20 million. The BBC reports that efforts are ongoing to recover an estimated £1.9 billion. Energy bills Major energy suppliers have ditched controversial tariffs that denied their existing customers their cheapest prices, amid speculation over a political crackdown on the sector, The Telegraph has learnt. Four of the Big Six suppliers  – E.ON, SSE, EDF and Npower – and the leading independent supplier, First Utility, all offered their best tariffs exclusively to new customers at certain points during the last month. The practice, which saw existing customers denied savings of more than £200 a year in some cases, was widely condemned as unfair by consumer campaigners. Living wage According to The Guardian, Curzon Cinemas, the British Library and RSA Insurance have all signed up as living wage employers as the independently verified pay rate rises by nearly 4 per cent in London. The voluntary benchmark pay rate for Londoners rises 35p an hour to £9.75 while the rate for the rest of the UK increases 2.4 per cent to £8.45 an hour, from £8.25. Both rates are well ahead of the national living wage of £7.20 an hour – the new legal minimum wage for over 25s introduced by the Government in April this year. Mark Carney Mark Carney surprised the Government last night by turning down the chance to stay in his post until 2021 after receiving lukewarm backing from Downing Street, The Times reports. The governor of the Bank of England said that he would leave in June 2019 — the earliest opportunity to depart after Brexit. Mr Carney, 51, was originally due to stand down in 2018 with the option of a three-year extension, which had been backed publicly by Philip Hammond, the chancellor. Benefits

Benefits will be capped at a lower rate from next week for more than 100,000 families in Britain, in a move that ministers hope will encourage them back to work, the Daily Mail reports.

At least 116,000 households with between one to four children will get less in benefits when the new cap comes in next Monday, according to research published today by the Chartered Institute of Housing. Families could be down by as much as £115 a week.

Pensions BMW is facing a battle with its British workforce as unions gear up for industrial action over plans to abandon its final-salary pension scheme, according to The Times. Unite has launched a consultative ballot of more than 5,000 staff at five sites across the country, accusing the German group of ‘robbery’ over the proposal to transfer staff to a defined-contribution scheme. Broadband

Shopping around for a new broadband deal should get easier for households from this week as new rules mean providers must be clearer with their pricing, Thisismoney reports.

In the past companies often advertised ‘free’ or rock-bottom broadband deals – only for a separate monthly line rental charge to be buried in the small print. However new rules from the Advertising Standards Agency mean companies must display the overall monthly cost and any up-front fees.

Millennials

As the country’s cost of living reaches a near two-year high post-Brexit, new analysis from Fidelity International shows millennials are being squeezed hardest as eating out, smartphones, clothing and footwear push up the cost of living compared to the national average. Fidelity International’s quarterly Generational Inflation Barometer, which identifies the actual inflation rate facing different age groups across the UK, finds that while UK inflation jumped to 1 per cent in September, for millennials it reached 1.4 per cent – almost double that of older generations.