Money News

TAX FRAUD

Millions of people are getting emails which say they are due a tax refund. All they have to do is click on a link to submit their request for the money. The amounts are modest – often just a couple of hundred pounds – and no doubt many people are taking the fateful step of clicking on the link. Don’t. It is a fraud. If you hover your mouse pointer over the link you will see that it takes you to a website outside the UK – many are in South Korea – which is ends in .kr. This address may well be a forwarding location to an untraceable and temporary internet café account. Other emails come with an attachment for you to click on. The link or attachment may be used to download what is called a Trojan Horse onto your computer. That is a small programme which monitors your activity and steal passwords and financial information. Or it may lead you to a website which asks for information from you and slowly leads you into the sticky trap where you end up giving away banking details or sending money in order to speed up the ‘refund’. Which will of course never arrive.

HMRC never sends out emails asking people to click for a refund. And if it does email you then it will always address you by your full name. But the safest rule is never click on any link in an email which claims to be from a bank or government department. If it contains information that you think you want to follow up make a separate phone call to the bank using a number on a paper document such as a statement.

Information: hmrc.gov.uk/security/index.htm

CAPITAL CHANGE
More than half a million people who get pension credit will see their income go up from the first week in November.

The people affected will all have savings above £6000. At the moment any savings above that amount reduce the pension credit you get. But from 2 November that threshold will rise to £10,000 and that will raise pension credit by up to £8 a week, though most of those affected will get an extra £3.20 and some will get less. You do not have to claim the extra – it should just appear with the first payment this month.

The new limit also applies to money off your council tax (or rates in Northern Ireland) and, for tenants, to money off rent as well. All of them should rise if they are currently reduced because your savings are above £6000.

The higher savings limit will also mean that 70,000 people who are currently excluded from pension credit because of their savings will now be able to get it. Many more will be able to get council tax benefit or housing benefit for the first time. However the Government has decided not to look for them or encourage them to claim.

Anyone who has been refused any of these benefits in the past should find out if they can claim now.

More information: Pension Credit helpline 0800 99 1234 (0808 100 6165 in Northern Ireland). Or put your details into the calculator at entitledto.com

THE WORST BANKS

Lloyds bank, which is partly owned by taxpayers, is the worst in the UK when it comes to customer complaints. In the first half of 2009 15,233 customers complained to the Financial Ombudsamn Service about it and its related businesses, far more than the 9,056 who complained about its closest rival Barclays

Worse still, new figures from the Ombudsman show that 95% of the complaints made by customers of Lloyds’s Black Horse subsidiary were found to be correct. That is the worst performance among the 140 financial firms in the tables. Third in the list was Lloyds’s Insurance services with 92% upheld. Lloyds Bank itself was tenth with 81%of complaints upheld. Lloyds relied on £17 billion of public funds to survive the recent banking crisis and is now 43% owned by us taxpayers.

Many of the worst offenders in the tables are those who sell insurance with loans. Loans.co.uk was second. But even on pure banking and credit the High Street banks do pretty badly. Abbey National had 71% of its banking complaints upheld, Alliance & Leicester had 70%, and Barclays 67%. Generally building societies did better – though most are small enough to have too few complaints to be included.

Before a complaint reaches the Ombudsman it has to go to the bank or insurance company itself which has the opportunity to sort it out. Only when that fails can it go to the Ombudsman. So it is remarkable that many big banks and insurers are not resolving more complaints themselves where the customer is in the right.

One industry insider told Saga “everyone could do better of course and publishing figures like this will keep everyone on their toes.” Let’s hope so.

More information: ombudsman-complaints-data.org.uk

SERPS WOES
The Government is making complex changes to a benefit no-one understood anyway. But the result is – you’ve guessed it – millions of us will be worse off.

The State Earnings related Pension Scheme (SERPS) was introduced by Barbara Castle in 1976 to give everyone a decent pension in retirement. Over the years it has been cut back by every government. It is now called State Second Pension (S2P) and is being cut again.

People earning more than £31,800 a year will earn less S2P for their National Insurance Contributions. At its worst they could lose 16% of the pension earned each year into the future. Over the next twenty years or so the Government wants to turn S2P into a flat rate supplement to the basic pension. And the latest cut is part of that process.

Another change reduces the amount of SERPS or S2P that a widow or widower can inherit. In the past they used to inherit all the SERPS earned by their late spouse. In 1986 the Thatcher Government decided to slash this entitlement in half from 2000. But civil servants forgot to tell anyone. So the present Government decided to phase the change in. A person widowed today may inherit anything from 100% down to just half their late spouse’s SERPS depending on the spouse’s age. It is 100% if the deceased reached pension age on 5 October 2000 or earlier. But it is only 50% if the deceased reached pension age on 6 October 1945 or later. Between those dates the inherited SERPS is between 60% and 90%. As time passes, more and more newly widowed spouses will be affected by this cut.

KING KONG 

How did they do it? It may seem jerky and unrealistic now but to cinema audiences in 1933 King Kong seemed almost real. How did they get a giant ape to climb the Empire State building, hold Fay Wray in his hand, and grab planes from the sky? The answer is on sale at Christie’s South Kensington later this month. And if you have a spare £100,000 or so it could soon be sitting on your mantelpiece. The 22 inch tall metal armature was made from interlocking ball and socket joints which were then covered in cotton, rubber and latex before being finished with rabbit fur. The mechanism was flexible enough to look like an ape but firm enough to hold still while each frame was shot to give the illusion of movement. The unique artefact is the star of a sale which also has film posters and other memorabilia at far more affordable prices. Some posters fetch a couple of hundred pounds. But if you used to beg borrow or steal posters of your favourite science fiction film in the 1950s now might be the time to bring them out. Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman (1958) is expected to fetch up to £3,500. And about half that for Invasion of the Saucer-Men (1957). More information christies.com