The new personal savings allowance means some will be better off earning LESS interest

Until now for every £100 of interest a basic-rate taxpayer earns outside an ISA, the taxman takes £20. Yet on 6 April, the savings landscape changes. The new personal savings allowance (PSA) means ALL basic-rate taxpayers will be able to earn £1,000 a year interest on all savings, higher rate £500, tax-free. But within the way this works...

Martin Lewis

25 February 2016

Council tax, 20 years since it was valued: a flawed system no one’s brave enough to sort out

Take a look at the back of your council tax letter, you’ll see that what band you’re in depends on the property’s value on 1 April 1991, twenty years ago today. This valuation was done in ‘second gear’ by estate agents and others driving past. It was a stop-gap measure, but in England and Scotland it’s...

Martin Lewis

1 April 2011

Parking Fines. You can reclaim them…

Last December I was hit by a stonking great parking fine. It was £60 for parking opposite a sign that effectively said “no parking until 6.30pm” – outrageously my fine was for parking there at 6.35pm. I blogged back then that this would be the first of my reclaim campaigns I would actually be using myself (see...

Martin Lewis

14 April 2009

My first reclaim: Unfair Parking Ticket.

Update Note: To find out what happened see the Parking Fines: You can reclaim them… blog. After all these years of reclaiming campaigns like bank charges & PPI I have never actually needed to do a reclaim myself. Until now. I received an outrageous parking ticket the other day for £120 (£60 if paid within 14 days)....

Martin Lewis

2 January 2009