‘This time next year Rodney, we will be millionaires.’ If Only Fools and Horses was still being made I imagine the scriptwriters would have got Del Boy disastrously deep into cryptocurrencies. Dodgy, Get Rich Quick schemes, skirting around the law always were his forte. And that is how I view cryptocurrencies. The bulls will cry,
The message from the budget last month was clear – at some point in the future the Chancellor is going to raise taxes. A lot. The announced increase in corporation tax rate from 19 per cent to 25 per cent from 2023 is a sign of things to come. And yet the overall tax take has
Most forecasts for the economy are pretty grim: bankruptcies, bad debts, job losses and a massive debt hangover leave little room for optimism. But I’m going to try. I think there is a wodge of money burning a hole in UK consumers’ pockets. And once they can, households will go out and spend it. This
With four cats and two children to feed, I’m not very Fire. But then I am not sure I want to be. ‘Fire’ is the ‘Financial independence, retire early’ movement that has proved popular among burnt-out millennials wanting to quit the corporate rat race. It began in America with a 1992 book, Your Money or
David Cameron’s new Inheritance tax policy is clearly an important political message of aspiration and family values rather than a policy that will either help many or actually have much fiscal impact. The OBR has numbers on death rates and estates subject to the tax: just under 600,000 people died in 2013/14 and only 5
There are many reasons that the fate of Cyprus is being followed so closely in Britain. One is sympathy for those who are about to pay the price for the sins of a banking sector that was at one point seven times the size of the island’s economy. Another is shock at how the island,
This picture is from a website for Cypriot homes: you can buy a three bedroom apartment for £1.6mn. Whoever owns that — property developer or individual and whichever bank lent them the money to develop or buy it — now risks being wiped out. And this is just the beginning. Here are a few thoughts
The last three years have been one big transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers. Thanks to record low interest rates, savers have gained little from tucking their money away in bank accounts, whereas borrowers have reaped the benefits. According to data from the Bank of England, mortgage holders paid interest of £1328 billion in
