An independent (financial adviser’s) view

Glasto and the election in the same week! What links the two great occasions is, in my view, the unexpected. Those you most anticipate often disappoint, the unknown often delight (Aurora, Confidence Man, who knew?) The election connection: all those carefully crafted policies are lost to the disappointments of gambling candidates and racist resting actors. More of my thoughts, for what they’re worth, from the garden in the video below. Although ours, thankfully, will soon be done and dusted, the American version will rumble for months yet. I heard a radio’ person describe himself as 'Bidenesque’ yesterday when he forgot to press a button, so that, it seems, has already become a thing. US readers must despair. Anyway, chins up, Wimbledon to come. And did you watch Coldplay? If not, do, inspiring, life-affirming, all of that and more,?I’d say.

“Nearly 9mn pensioners paying income tax as frozen thresholds bite”

Were one to be at all cynical, one might say that a Conservative government proposing to stop pensioners paying tax is only undoing what’s already been done. Since 2020/21, the number of pensioners paying tax has already increased by more than 2mn, almost 30% more.?This is the effect, of course, of the combination of the wonderful triple lock and not-so-wonderful (unless you want to see a doctor some time this century) freezing of allowances to raise more tax. As previously rehearsed, allowing those who have never before completed a tax return to become tax payers and have to declare their state pension income would be a logistical and enforcement nightmare for HMRC; so my guess is that making the state pension tax-free would be welcomed by those having to administer it and cost-neutral at best. Fetch me a mirror, I see some smoke on the horizon…

“Does it Still Pay to Be a Landlord in the UK?”

‘Should I buy-to-let?’ has been an oft-asked question in recent years, but not, it’s true, in recent months. Those who know will know that I have never been a fan of property as an investment (as opposed to somewhere to live). I know, I would say that, wouldn’t I, it’s in my interest to promote the alternative of stocks and shares. However, higher tax and stamp duty rates, lack of liquidity, running costs and tenant problems have always been there. Now add, if you’re one of the two thirds of landlords with a mortgage, much higher interest rates and you can see why fewer are considering it. And yet…there’s a big and growing need for properties to (affordably) rent with security for the tenant as well as the landlord. Answers on a postcard, please.

“UK becomes the fraud capital of the world”

Remember that rather silly song?: ‘Everybody’s good at doing something, and I’m good at cooking crumble’. No? Well, we are, it seems, good at something but not something we'd want to be good at. Online fraud in the UK has increased faster than in other major economies with companies losing ￡ms a year, either directly or by having to compensate scammed customers. And the problem is that the crooks are always one step ahead of the cyber security guys. I’d guess many of them are cyber security guys who’ve moved to the dark and more profitable side and that tracing them is pretty much impossible. Having said that, I was talking to someone who’s recently worked in a Regent Street store, where gangs routinely walk in, blatantly clear rails of designer gear and run out giving the finger to the CCTV.??In the words of yet another song, Somethings Gotta Change.

“Tax simplification policies needed from next government”

One of the Truss Financial Event measures which has yet to be reversed is Kwasi’s abolition of the Office of Tax Simplification. That’s certainly not because it’s simple enough already, as we have one of the world’s most complex tax systems; not least because of successive governments’ ‘pledges’ not to increase the holy trinity of income tax, NI and VAT. As a result, all they can do to tinker around with what we already have, adding a knob here and a whistle there to bring in a few extra bob and hope that no-one notices. And so more and more layers of complexity are added, making the whole thing a nightmare to administer and our exams even more difficult (spare a thought!). Will anyone be brave enough to do some root and branch reform? Well, maybe someone with a big enough majority in parliament…

Anthony Quinn is the author of one of my favourite evs, ‘Freya’, one of the few in my life that I have reread, which puts it up there with both ‘The Great Gatsby’ and??‘Still Life’ in my personal panoply. ‘Our Friends in Berlin’ is??a highly literate, tense and very enjoyable wartime espionage thriller. Jack Hoste is an MI5 agent posing as a Nazi sympathiser, identifying and recruiting others to supposedly pass the secrets they gather to the titular ‘friends’, but actually to control both them and the flow of intelligence.??Amy Strallen runs an in-demand matchmaking agency but was, pre-war, friends with Marita, clever, attractive, anti-semitic and a Nazi-sympathiser whom Hoste hopes to recruit and infiltrate. The plot provides an insight into a part of the home-front story not often told, the evocation of London in the Blitz and its aftermath is as good as any I’ve read and the final chapters are un-put-downable. Not on the reread, but certainly on the recommended list.