This is Money Blog

Tax tables: How the 2009 Budget affects you

Tables that help explain how the Budget 2009 affects you
(Source: Daily Mail's Money Mail team)

These tables show how tax allowances and benefit changes will affect your income. This year almost everyone is better off but the sting in the tail will be tax increases next year and National Insurance rises in 2011.

This is particularly relevant for those earning over £100,000 who will lose their personal allowance and those with more than £150,000 who face a 50% tax rate from 2010.

Everybody should read table 1 and then whichever of tables 2-8 most closely applies to them.

TABLE 1 shows your tax allowances for this year compared with last year. It also shows a big widening of the 11% band for Class 1 National Insurance for employed people and in the 8% band of Class 4 for the self-employed. The other tables show your income allowing for Income Tax, National Insurance, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit and Child Benefit.

Read TABLE 2 if you are married (or cohabiting) with children and just one partner is working. If you have one child your income will be slightly less, if you have three or more it will be slightly greater.

Read TABLE 3 if you are married (or cohabiting) with children, and both partners work. Our table shows overall household income assuming it is split equally.

Families with more children will receive slightly more than shown and those with one child less.

Read TABLE 4 if you are single and have children. You will be better off if you have more children.

Read TABLE 5 if you are a self-employed couple with two children and sharing income as a partnership. Those with one child will be worse off, those with more children would be better off.

Read TABLE 6 if you are single people and have no children or grown-up children. Couples will receive slightly higher tax credits. Read TABLE 7 if you are a married pensioner and are the one receiving the pension and married couples' allowance, available if one of you was born before April 6, 1935. Where the annual pension income is shared between the couple, the household income will be higher.

Read TABLE 8 if you are any other pensioners, including the spouse of someone receiving the married couples' allowance. Those aged 75 and over receive slightly higher tax allowances, so their total income will be greater than shown.

Table 1

 

Table 2

 

Table 3

 

Table 4

 

Table 5

 

Table 6

 

Table 7

 

Table 8

Useful links:

- Budget 2009: What it means for you

- Budget 2009: At a glance - key points

- Budget 2009: Cash for bangers, will it work?

- Guides: Essential tax tips and advice

Money for nothing

Picture this if you will. You go to the supermarket to buy your weekly groceries. You look at the receipt when you get home and find that a number of items have been added to the list.
You wouldn't be a happy bunny would you? Well this is exactly what us happening to countless savers when they retire and decide to buy an annuity.

Several major insurance companies, Standard Life and Axa included, will charge you for  financial advice even when you don't receive any.

So, while you may not have heard a peep from your  adviser for 20 years, they'll still get a chunk of your pension. Galling - isn't it?

Absurdly generous contracts signed between the firm and the adviser when they set up the  pension ensure they get a slice  (usually between 1-1.5%) of your pension pot as commission whether they do any work or not.

So if you're pension pot is worth £100,000, then - as long as they're still trading - your long lost IFA could pocket up to £1,500. Not bad work if you can get it.

Some firms say they will drop the charges if you tell them that the IFA hasn't given you any advice. But given the vast majority of people won't have a clue they're being charged in the first place, this is hardly likely.

At best, these contracts were based on the hopelessly outdated, naive assumption that the adviser would continue to provide ongoing advice to the saver and would help them find the best annuity when they retired.

At worst, they are examples of how pension firms used attractive commission payments to encourage advisers to sell their pension rather than someone else's. (As well as an initial commission, advisers would typically have been paid renewal commission and annuity commission).

Thankfully,  Scottish Life and L&G say they have nipped these automatic payments in the bud but they explain they still have to honour older contracts with advisers. So those who set up pensions with them more than four or five years ago will still have this money automatically deducted from their pension.

Meanwhile Axa has now pledged to  end these automatic payments and Standard Life says it is reviewing its policy.

This is all just indicative of the wider problems that face savers when the retire and want to draw a pension.

Six in ten savers automatically roll over into their existing pension provider's annuity rather than shop around for the best rate. By doing so they stand to lose thousands of pounds over the course of their retirement. When you consider that almost a million savers are set to buy an annuity next year, that's a lot of money down the drain. Much of the blame has to be pinned on pension firms, many of which have been keeping savers in the dark about their right to shop around.

Four in ten firms are failing to spell out clearly the advantages of shopping around to savers approaching retirement, according to a damning report published earlier this year by the Financial Services Authority. The same report found that six in ten savers suffered delays when switching their pension to another firm.

At Money Mail we receive numerous complaints from readers who have been left waiting months to start receiving their pension.

There are, however, encouraging signs that the pensions industry - spearheaded by its trade body the Association of British Insurers - is finally getting its act together. It has produced a standard letter to inform savers more clearly about their options and has embarked on a project designed to speed up pension transfers for those that do find a better annuity rate elsewhere.

Savers everywhere will have to keep their fingers crossed.

Make sure you get the best annuity rate with our annuities finder.

Foxtons: So that's how they pay for those Minis

I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of estate agents. There’s something deeply unpleasant about being told by a spiky-haired upstart called Gideon that a pokey bedsit in Dalston is actually a spacious one-bedroom flat in Islington.

But now, after a recent run in with Foxtons, my thoughts turn to violence whenever I seem them swarming around in their company-branded Minis.

A couple of months back I moved out of a flat I shared with two of my friends. We handed in our notice to Foxtons and promptly received a letter demanding we cough up £140 to pay for them to check the inventory. The letter - quoting clause 14 point somethingorother in the tenancy agreement - said we should transfer the money without delay.

Trouble was - the clause didn’t exist. In fact, it very clearly stated that the landlord should pay for checking the inventory. Armed with this irrefutable evidence I phoned Foxtons.

Rather than apologising they kindly agreed to ‘waive’ the fee that they had no right to charge in the first place.

One wonders how many Minis are paid for by tenants who don’t bother to check the small print.

And on a more serious point, why aren’t these people regulated? They earn bucket loads of commission to sell you a house – the biggest financial investment most people will ever make.

It seems this wretched credit crunch is at least proving a chastening experience for estate agents, with some poor souls even waiving their commission. As they say, every cloud…..

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If you're thinking of switching banks steer well clear of Alliance & Leicester. I moved over from Barclays just over a year ago and have had nothing but trouble ever since.

It seems that what they dish out in terms of competitive interest rates, they make up for with non-existent customer service. The latest farce illustrates this perfectly and has finally persuaded me to switch again. 

This started two weeks ago when I stupidly left my wallet on the tube. I phoned up immediately to cancel my debit card and was told it would take 7-10 working days to get a replacement. (Which I thought was ridiculous in itself)

I won't bore you with the details but basically they keep on sending me pin numbers which don't work. I've wasted about two hours of my life waiting on hold and then dealing with a succession of hapless individuals whose only response is to send me another useless pin.

It then occurred to me that in ten years of banking with Barclays I'd never had any problems. If I lost a card I'd receive a new one in a couple of days. If they had to send me a new pin it would actually work. And if I had a problem I could go into a branch and sort it out. Easy.

Now my conclusion is not that you shouldn't shop around - anything but. But if you're happy with the service then my advice is to stay put, not move because you think you should.

James Salmon, Money Mail

Fraud: How I was fleeced on my bank card

I am currently watching my bank account being emptied and it's not down to overspending.

In the past I have been cynical about the threat of card fraud but now it's happened to me, it seems I was the only one who has not suffered before.

Here's what happened. I was having lunch in a restaurant on Friday. I handed my Lloyds TSB debit card to pay the bill - £32.95 - and the waitress put my card in her chip and pin machine. I tapped in my number. She told me it hadn't gone through and the terminal said she had to phone for clearance. Not having any cash on me I told her to do that: my first mistake, letting the card out of my sight.

After at least 10 minutes she returned and said the bank needed to talk to me. I followed her to the reception and took the phone. A woman at the other end said she was from HSBC and she had my bank, Lloyds TSB, on the other line and needed to verify my identity: what was my date of birth, did I share the account with anyone and what were the first and third letters of my mother's maiden name.

I thought it was odd but I was in a hurry, it was a small amount, I had been to the restaurant often and added to that, the waitresses were telling other customers to pay by cash because they had problems with their card machine. Anyway, the amount was verified and I went off in a huff, wishing I'd knocked the service charge off.

I decided to check my bank balance when I got back to the office because a conversation with my ever-cynical husband had raised doubts over whether something fishy had happened. And there it was - a £32 transaction for somewhere abroad plus a £1 handling fee.

I haven't been abroad since June and the account is in my name only. I called Lloyds and was told there were signs of fraudulent activity on my account. That £32 had come from a taxi firm in Canada. Apparently, a lot of card fraud is from Canada at the moment. I was told to destroy my card and that all was now sorted and I wasn't to worry. Unfortunately, as of today more than £720 has been taken from my acccount and although Lloyds tell me I'll get it back in 'seven to 10 days' it seems I've got at least one more fradulent transaction to go through yet.

My question is, what else could I have done? I reported my concerns about fraud less than an hour after they had happened. Yet I am still having to wait to get my money back and frankly, it could take ages. I have never disclosed my PIN. I've not used unsafe websites. I do hope that I get the funds recredited soon but at the moment, I wonder how long it will take for the Canadian fraudsters to empty my account.

- Charlotte Beugge, Deputy Personal Finance Editor, Daily Mail

>> Latest news and advice on fraud

Someone's been sitting on my cash

I received my energy bills from Powergen yesterday and finally decided to claim back my overpayments. The bill informed me in huge letters: 'You are £129.42 in credit.' But underneath it said: 'We will carry your balance forward to the next statement.'

Oh no you won't I thought. Why should they sit on my cash? It's estimated that these energy companies sit on hundreds of millions and possibly billions of pounds of our money by charging too much on direct debits.

Even the regulator, Ofgem, has no idea how much of our money they are sitting on - and what's more they are under no obligation to reveal the figures. In their home countries, most of our foreign-owned utilities refund overpayment - but not here. Instead they keep our cash, earn interest on it and use it to boost their profitability.

So why not claim it back?

I was forced to sit on hold for 12 minutes before I got through but at least it was a free number. The call centre operator actually checked whether she could send me a cheque. The cheek of it - it's my money. Then she asked whether I wanted the whole amount back.

I said yes - unless they wanted to send me some extra so I could earn interest on their money  for a change.

So in seven to 10 days I should receive a cheque. You might think £129.42 is a small sum to bother about but multiply that by the number of customers and you've got a hefty pile of cash.

And this is the middle of the summer - my credit balance is only likely to increase over the coming three or four months.

There's one other piece of good news for the Hazell household. This excess means I must be using less electricity and gas than last year because I'm on a fixed price tariff.

Our energy bill for the last year is a tad under £825 which is quite a bit less than the national average and shows the benefit of cracking down on standby, turning off lights and generally being an energy miser.

Tony Hazell, Money Mail editor

RELATED STORIES ON THIS IS MONEY:

>> Fuel bills update: Should you switch?

>> Energy giants cash £1bn overpayments

>> Energy firms sit on direct debit millions

Easyjet, cancellation and travel insurance claims

The Hazell family is currently rather irritated with Squeezyjet. I'm normally a great fan of this low cost airline. It's efficient and you get what you pay for. I'll have no truck with people who turn up just before check in closes and then moan that they can't sit next to their nearest and dearest. You know how the system works and if you can't bear to be parted for a couple of hours then get there earlier!

So what's my problem? Well, my son's back is in plaster and his consultant says he can't fly so we've had to cancel our holiday.

So I log on to the website and search for the cancel button. I'm not expecting any money back, you understand. I just want to cancel and get a letter (for which I'm willing to pay a modest fee if necessary) confirming it so I can make a claim on my travel insurance.

There's no way to cancel online so I send an email. The auto response doesn't answer my query neither does the next email to arrive which, bizarrely, apologises for the long wait. In fact I have waited mere minutes and this is clearly a copy of a response sent to someone else in relation to a completely different question.

So I then phone and am told that I'm not allowed to cancel the booking and must become a no-show. Who, precisely, does this benefit I wonder?

I must wait another eight weeks before I can make an insurance claim. But from Easyjet's point of view there were 10 of us on this flight in school holidays. A return to Portugal on our flights is currently selling for £218.98 plus taxes, so that's more than £2,000 worth of seats they could resell if they accepted our cancellation.

There's also the not insignificant fact that they are sitting on our taxes. As I said we don't want a penny back from them (except the taxes) we just want to have a letter confirming we've had to cancel.

I know their aim is to cut out unnecessary admin but   I really can't see how anyone benefits from this policy.

- Tony Hazell, Money Mail Editor, Daily Mail

Other blogs...
> BA lost baggage... and customer service goes missing too
> Now Ryanair charges for NOT taking a bag
> Overdue airline compensation rules
> Don't cry for me Argentina Airlines

And advice...
- The latest advice on travel insurance and holiday money

Switching is great - But why all these problems?

While it's a good idea to switch energy suppliers, it seems to throw up a huge number of problems.

Money Mail has written on the customer service problems at British Gas, many of which can be blamed on its computer system not accepting transfers properly. But it's not just BG. I persuaded my 70+ widowed mother to move her gas and electricity last year and frankly, wish I'd never done so.

While the gas went through easily and with no problem, the electricity has been a nightmare. She moved from EDF to Atlantic and, as far as we knew, it all went through OK - eventually. There had been problems with a mythical second meter which were eventually cleared up and from December, her direct debits with EDF were stopped and she started paying Atlantic instead.

Last month she received a confusing letter from EDF which basically said that she owed it money, but not to worry, she should carry on with her direct debits as usual. Difficult considering she wasn't paying them. I emailed them but got rebuffed because I wasn't the account holder.

So I rang up instead and pretended to be my mother instead - and was told that there was no problem, it would write to confirm this. The next letter of course said nothing of the sort - it just said that as direct debit payments had stopped, it would bill quarterly instead.

I rang, again pretending to be my mother, and was told I should ignore that letter, it didn't mean anything. I just wonder what the next mail will bring.

- Charlotte Beugge, Money Mail

PS - Get our latest advice on whether to switch your energy supplier here.

TalkTalk: Is it worse than British Gas?

I've often considered running an award for the worst customer service. British Gas would obviously be a contender but my vote goes to TalkTalk.

I moved there last year for free broadband - but boy have I regretted it as I spend endless hours on the phone dealing with a call centre in India or, more often listening to Thunderclap Newman's Something in the Air. I now know every note and word of that song. I hear it in my sleep and hum it as I walk the streets. 

My call waiting service stopped working properly when I was 'upgraded' to 8 megabit broadband toward the end of last year. I finally gave up attempting to get it put right. Life is too short and they seem to be incapable of fixing it. 

The latest battle is getting calls to mobiles blocked to prevent my teenage son running up three-figure phone bills. You might think that this is fairly straightforward, but nothing is straightforward with TalkTalk.  I originally made the request on March 16 and was told it would take three to five days.

When my massive April bill arrived last week I discovered they had not been blocked. I called immediately and, after 40 minutes on the phone, was promised they would be blocked and offered a refund.  At the weekend I received a text saying the problem was solved. It wasn't. I called again on Monday and after 30 minutes on hold and being cut off twice I eventually spoke to a man who told me I simply needed to key in an activation code (the first I'd heard of it). He also said the call waiting would be fixed and promised to call at 8.15 on Tuesday morning. 

The call never came, when I used the activation code I received a helpful message saying I wasn't subscribed to the service. And neither my call waiting nor caller display work. So I've now taken a step backward.

I wasted a further 25 minutes on the problem this morning but somebody who identified herself as 'Anthea' promised the services would be set up in 'two to four hours'. That was at 10.35 am; I am highly sceptical.   I an now keeping a diary of the number of hours I spend on the phone trying to get TalkTalk to fix what should be straightforward problems.

What is most galling is the record message saying: 'We apologise for your continued wait. We will answer your call shortly.' They're not sorry at all. If they were they would do something about waiting times.  TalkTalk has the worst customer service I've ever experienced (and I'm a former NTL customer, so I know about poor customer service).

Perhaps you've experienced worse. Let me know.

- Tony Hazell, Money Mail

See also -

This is Money's TalkTalk special, with news, advice and debate

Talking the Talk Talk

Teenage car insurance woes

Aaah! I'm suffering car insurance agony with my 17-year-old son. Our insurance is coming up for renewal and we'd like to put my son on it. We've rung around and been quoted £400 without him and £1,400 with him. It's hardly as if we drive a souped up car. We've got a 1 litre S-reg Nissan Micra.

Now, I understand that teenagers are more risky, but if they're this expensive to insure on our policy how the hell can they be expected to buy their own insurance? You can just see the mindset - 'I'll drive without cover and risk the £250 fine' - which is what thousands choose to do.

What's really shocked me is the rise in premiums since we put other son on the policy five years ago - that cost around £700. One insurer told us it would be cheaper to insure for any driver over 17 than for our son as a named driver.

The problem is I promised to get him driving lessons if he promised never to ride a motorbike - a fair compromise if you've seen the stats for motorbike accidents among youngsters.

There must be a sensible solution here, but I can't see it. Meanwhile my wife is spending the week on the phone searching for a cheaper insurer while I brace myself to lose a sizeable chunk of money for daring to want my son to learn to drive responsibly.

- Tony Hazell, Money Mail

>> News and advice on car insurance 

Talking the Talk Talk

They talk the talk but can they walk the walk? Talk Talk have been enticing customers with high profile advertising but the recent experiences of myself and colleague James Coney suggest their customer service doesn't match their marketing.

When I was 'upgraded' to 8 meg broadband my phone network services stopped working. So call waiting and caller recognition stopped working. The initial customer service while I was trying to resolve this was crap as one call centre passed me to another and nobody had the slightest idea how to solve the problems. Their service provider Opal claimed it was a problem with my phone, which turned out to be baloney.

Now I have caller recognition but it turns out, that despite their claims, Talk Talk cannot offer the same call waiting service as BT. Their upgrade means that when someone calls they just hear a constant ringing giving the impression that either I'm out or can't be bothered to answer the phone. This, I'm told is progress. I call it incompetence.

James Coney meanwhile has no broadband or phone at all  - which was particularly useful when he was trying to file a late story on Tuesday. He was promised it would be fixed in 48 hours but has just received an automated text promising another update in 48 hours. Fortunately he is an office-based journalist or he would be completely unable to work.

As it is he's having to run up a mobile phone bill because he can't make calls from his landline. He's looking forward to a rebate on his bill for services not provided.

Perhaps the regulator should insist that before it can advertise for any more customers Talk Talk should first have to provide a decent service to its existing ones.

Tony Hazell, Money Mail

>> More on mobile phones and broadband