Car leasing customers and business owners have called for more notice on policy changes that could play a part in their future agreements and finances.
The changes to Benefit In Kind (BIK) Tax has found criticism from both industry watchdogs and firms who use vehicle leasing to help benefit their business.
Previously any changes to taxation would first serve a three year notice period before coming into force but this change was already in force by April (2011).
The new policy will have massive implications on the decisions that firms make regarding their individual vehicle or fleet lease an industry insider said: “ An example would be an employee choosing their company car today and not actually knowing what contribution they will be making, there’s no clarity at all to what future tax bills could be.”
Benefit In Kind tax is a PAYE contribution that is taken for an employees use of a company car outside of the working requirements.
The amendments that came into force in April included the abolition of reductions for alternative fuel and a restructuring of the emissions allowances.
Analysts believe that this could then result in many firms who use vehicle leasing and contract hire withholding company vehicle renewals or shortening their leasing agreements/contracts which will cost firms more money but could offer assurance in the long run.
Hopefully this shouldn’t have too much of an impact on the sector as company leasing has become more and more popular in recent years, from vans to executive saloons there has been a realisation that that you can make a good impression to a client, save money on tax and VAT without having to pay out the high forecourt prices.
For those of you who visit FinanceBam regularly have probably seen a bit of a change recently. Gone have all the financial banners and we are currently just focussing on reviews only. The truth is we felt we had lost our way and had started to push the banners more than what the site was all about right from the start and that is reviews.
So we are now going through the whole site, changing our content to reflect the needs and want of our visitors. This has been hampered a bit from the work going on with a second site called MortgageBam that will focus on putting you in touch with mortgage advisers throughout the UK, so you can see what Mortgages are really available and get face to face advice. But enough of that back to Financebam.
We had a lot of pages throughout the site which now need changing an that is a huge task, as most are done manually, it is also important we ensure we are FSA compliant and have been talking to them recently about this.
We will be adding a disclaimer to the site, even though we do not introduce financial services anymore, but just in case it is not seen to be correct.
That’s it for now; we will aim to keep you more up to date with the news as we go along.
Lisa Petit wrote an article in Yahoo Finance that put the focus on going green to save money. One has to wonder with all the hype about going green these days whether we are truly ready to put it into action.
uSwitch.com, a comparison and switching services recently conducted a survey to see if consumers can ‘walk the walk’ while they ‘talk the talk.’ In the survey 61% said they paid the money to insulate their homes, 57% are washing clothes in lower temperatures, and 70% said they are no longer leaving appliances on standby.
However, the study was not entirely positive. 79% of people thought they did not have enough information to become more energy efficient and only 0.8% thought that going green would save them money.
People haven’t switched to green yet because they think it’s too expensive and also because many consumers don’t know what green energy exactly is and why some plans are greener than others. (more…)
As with all new websites you are not maintaining but developing, creating and reparing issues you have got wrong. That has effected the finacebam news section in two ways.
1/ We are not up to date with finacial information and for now have asked our writers to hold fire until we do catch up.
2/ When we do post the news, it is no longer news because we are so far behind.
However what is the point of having a news section if we don not have a finacial website in the first place and that is how it is at the moment. With 8 months to the offical finish stage, there is still much to do. the financial news will then of course just be achives, but we are working on it.
An article in the June 21, 2007 edition of Telegraph compared the rankings of the video site YouTube to that of BBC.
In a study it was found that www.bbc.co.uk was ranked number one each week for the past two years. YouTube has held the second place since October of last year. However, YouTube is “rapidly closing that gap” says Heather Hopkins, vice president of Hitwise, the Internet Marketing Group.
While the BBC site continues to grow in amount of visitors, so does YouTube and YouTube is growing more than BBC. This only accounts however for hits on the homepage and not any clicks on links leading further into the site. (more…)
This week’s article in the Yahoo Finance, Money Weekly section, it shows how to save money on technology. With the ever-increasing popularity of everything-technical among kids and adults alike, how can consumers save a buck? The most important and obvious way is to be patient. By waiting until the hype has receded a bit, prices will be lowered, keeping more money in your pocket. (more…)
How would a normal person know how much interest they are being charged? Normally, everyone would just check the APR, which is not the best way to find out you charges.
Banks have a way charging interest in so many different ways that it is seemingly impossible to work out how much you are being charged and how to compare different card as they all have their own strategies, which also makes the APR meaningless as reported on msn money by Chris Gilchrist.
The good news is that the credit card companies have been reported and investigated by the office of fair trading to regulate the way cards charge and advertise interest charges to their customers. With the lending business being scrutinized heavily by the trading standards for unjust charges, the business is coming under increasing competition and costing them vital profit revenue. Whilst investigations are still undergoing into the unjust charges levied by these companies for late payments, this new investigation has come as yet bigger blow for lending businesses. (more…)