Tax Man to clamp Buy to Let Mortgage Investors

With the United Kingdom facing the most substantial budget deficit in the coming year than any other nation in Western Europe, HM Revenue and Customs has announced plans to extract additional taxes from approximately 80,000 landlords who may not have paid enough in taxes over the course of the past six years on their buy to let mortgage investments. Read more

Government set to privatise student loans

Earlier this month a bill regarding student loans quietly passed through its final reading in the House of Commons.

It will allow the Government to raise up to £5bn by taking a chunk of the student loan book and selling it off to private banks. This loan book which represents the income stream derived from graduates paying interest on money borrowed from the Government to finance UK university courses which is currently worth £17.5bn. Read more

Barclays banks profits drop

UK bank Barclays has seen annual profits drop to £7.08bn, including a net loss of nearly £1.6bn stemming from turbulence on the global credit markets.

Bank profits fell by 1.1% from £7.13bn a year earlier, but met market forecasts. Barclays’ shares have fallen 42% in the past year on uncertainty over its exposure to US sub-prime mortgages following the US housing slowdown. Read more

Avoid the credit card blacklist

UK Credit Card companies are to start sharing personal data in the spring that will help them weed out prudent and therefore ‘unprofitable’ customers for the first time.

Banks have been talking to industry bodies for several months about new initiative that will enable them to identify consumers who clear their balances in full every month, or who constantly switch to 0 per cent deals. Such customers make the banks no money because they do not pay punitive interest charges of up to 28%. Read more

FSA will take tougher stance on inside dealing

Senior management in investment banks face a greater chance of being prosecuted for maintaining weak defences against insider dealing, even in the absence of specific instances of market abuse over the past year.

Last month it launched it first criminal prosecution, having previously relied on civil proceedings. Read more

Growing concerns over property defaults

There recently has been a growing risk over defaults commercial property loan this year. In a trend that could knock down real property estate values and create more jitter in the credit world, city analysts and bankers have warned.

Us property firms in particular have took big-short term loans to finance acquisitions in recent years at very low-interest are now struggling to refinance this debt, as banks curb lending and continued commercial property falls. Read more

The fixed rate loan rip off

UK banks are reaping an extra £3.5 billion a year on fixed-rate mortgages after raising margins to 25 times pre-credit crisis levels.

More than half of all borrowers were taking out fixes as recently as September, despite expectations that rates would fall, because many loan lenders had in effect pulled out of the tracker market. Read more

Barclaycard Flexi-Rate 10% Repay Review

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Read more

Concerns over online banking checks

Security extras such as number fobs, card readers and password checks might make consumers more wary of net bank websites, they fear.

The warning comes as research shows how phishing gangs are targeting attempts to grab customer login details.

But the UK body overseeing net banking says figures show criminals are getting away with less from online accounts. Read more

Homeowners face mortgage shock

Hundreds of thousands of UK homeowners could pay more for their mortgages during 2008 even though the Bank of England is expected to cut interest rates to at least 5.50%.

Around 1.4m will come to the end of cheap fixed rates over the next 12 months. While failing rates for new mortgage borrowers, analysts warn many will see a leap in repayments as the credit crunch fallout continues. Read more

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