e-mail Paul Lewis on paul@paullewis.co.uk
Don’t be scammed
One in twenty of us was the victim of a scam in 2010. That remarkable figure
from the Office of Fair Trading implies that well over two million people were
tricked out of money by crooks. And the research also found that 7% (one in 14)
of those duped lost more than £4000. The most common scam is called the ‘advance
fee’ trick. It offers to unlock an inheritance, a tax refund, a lottery win or
to help someone release money from a corrupt foreign government or bank. To do
that magic it dupes the victim into handing over bank details and then paying an
upfront fee. Further demands always follow.
In the cold light of day these schemes seem like obvious scams. But at the time
they can seem very reasonable. More than six out of ten people who had fallen
for them said that they looked real and that was why they got involved.
There is no doubt that scams are getting cleverer. They use email and cold phone
calls to try to persuade you that some special deal is only available for a
short time and if you pay them or give them your personal details then you will
get a big reward. Any such email or call is always a lie. Don’t be embarrassed
or afraid to delete it, destroy it, or hang up.
Protect yourself by keeping these rules in mind:-- If you have not entered a
lottery you cannot win it. If someone says they want to transfer money from a
foreign country using your account it is never true. If an email says you are
due a tax refund it is not from HMRC. If anyone offers you anything that seems
too good to be true it always is. Never be tempted to join the millions of
people who lose billions of pounds to crooks and con artists every year.
Claim DLA for poor vision if you can
People under 65
with very poor vision but who are not blind can get a tax-free benefit worth
£51.40 a week from April.
Blind people under 65 can already get a benefit called mobility component of
Disability Living Allowance. From April this benefit is being extended to those
with what is called severe visual impairment. That has a technical definition
and your ophthalmologist will be able to tell if you qualify for it or not. If
you already get lower rate mobility component (£19.55 from April) then you will
get the amount raised to £51.40. Anyone who is 65 or more on 11 April 2011 –
born before 11 April 1946 – is excluded from the extension. And that includes
people over 65 who already get the lower rate of mobility component. They can
keep that for life but cannot get it upgraded to the full rate of £51.40.
However, if you are under 65 on 11 April 2011 and claim before you reach that
age then you can continue to receive it for life as long as your condition does
not improve significantly.
Redundancy tax change
People who are made redundant and get a payment of more than £30,000 will be
routinely overtaxed by the revenue and have to reclaim the extra a year later.
The new rules, revealed in an obscure HMRC document in January, reverse the
present rules which mean that bigger redundancy payments are often undertaxed,
leaving the Revenue with the task of tracking people down and demanding the tax
due.
From April a redundancy payment will be taxed using a code called 0T which means
no personal tax allowance should be applied. The tax code system also assumes
that the one-off lumpsum payment will be made each month. So a payment of
£50,000 will have the £30,000 tax-free element deducted and then the balance of
£20,000 will be assumed to be a taxable monthly payment. If that is made in
April then it will be counted as 1/12th of an annual payment of
£240,000. The result is that a redundancy payment totalling more than £32,917
can attract some higher rate tax at 40% and if it is over £42,500 it can attract
some additional rate 50% tax. Excess tax cannot be claimed back until after the
end of the tax year of the payment. So many taxpayers will be making an interest
free loan to the Revenue just as they lose their job.
e-mail Paul Lewis on paul@paullewis.co.uk