April 2024 Newsletter | Cylchlythyr Misol Ebrill 2024
- As we draw to the end of the 2023-2024 tax year, here are a few matters to be aware of as we enter a new tax year on 6 April 2024:
- Personal allowance: the tax-free amount individuals can earn before paying income tax remains at £12,570. Those in receipt of State Pension could start paying tax for the first time, if their State Pension is above £12,570.
- Savings interest allowance: the tax-free allowance for interest remains at £1,000 for basic rate taxpayers, £500 for higher rate taxpayers (£nil for additional rate taxpayers). When interest rates were 0.5%, you needed at least £200k in savings before you reached the allowance for basic-rate taxpayers (higher-rate taxpayers would have needed £100k). Now that interest rates are over 5%, you only need £20,000 or £10,000 (respectively) to be at risk of paying tax on your savings interest.
- Dividend allowance: the tax-free dividend allowance is reducing from £1,000 to £500. If you hold stocks & shares outside of an ISA, you may need to declare your annual dividends going forward.
- Child benefit thresholds: as reported in our previous newsletter, the threshold at which you start to repay child benefit is increasing from £50,000 to £60,000 from April 2024, with the upper limit on full repayment of child benefit increasing from £60,000 to £80,000.
- Capital gains tax on residential property: the higher rate of capital gains tax from the sale of residential property is reducing from 28% to 24% from 6 April 2024 (lower rate to remain at 18%). If you are contemplating selling a property, please contact us for a capital gains tax estimate.
- Have you recently received a bonus from your employer? Don't spend it all at once! We have seen a significant rise in the underpayment of tax by employees on their bonus. This has led to a nasty surprise many months later, when this becomes apparent, and especially if the bonus has already been spent. Please contact us if you wish for us to check your tax position.
Ask Huw & Aled: my very elderly parents live in a 4-bedroom house in a good location and took out a shared appreciation mortgage in 1998 with Bank of Scotland. The deal was awful. No interest was payable on the mortgage, but the bank are taking 75% of the appreciation of the property since that date, which is a huge amount of money. The Bank are being very obstructive and unhelpful. Can anything be done?
These mortgages, which were sold by Barclays and Bank of Scotland between 1997 - 1998, have caused huge distress for many unfortunate families, often leading to losses of many hundreds of thousands of pounds. One recent “class action” claim was subject to a successful compensation claim coming to a “commercial settlement, without any admission of liability”.
Huw is acting on behalf of one family with a new claim and Class Action in conjunction with a firm of City of London lawyers. If you or any relatives / friends are in a similar situation, please contact Huw in strictest confidence on 029 2069 4524.
