Archive for March 2018
A refund for power of attorney
You may be due a refund if you have registered a power of attorney in recent years. It is not often the government offers a refund because of overcharging, but last month it emerged that the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) had been levying excessive fees for four years. The fees related to the…
Read MoreImprovement to ISA inheritance rules
The rules for inheriting ISAs will change from 6 April. It was announced by George Osborne in 2014 that ISAs would become inheritable by surviving spouses and civil partners. At the time, nobody – not even the Treasury – was clear what the then chancellor meant. The plans for ISA ’inheritance’, when they eventually emerged,…
Read MoreDividends to slow after strong 2017
A recently released report shows dividend payments in the UK grew more than 10% in 2017. The report included good news for investors, as UK listed companies paid out £94.4 billion of dividends in 2017. This was up 10.5% on the previous year and a new record. However, the headline figures do not tell the…
Read MoreA turbulent February for stock markets
February saw a dramatic return of volatility to global stock markets. On Friday 2 February, after most of the world’s share markets had finished for the week, the Dow Jones Index dropped by 666 points in a day. Never mind all the beastly connotations of that number, in fact it was a drop of about…
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