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Double Taxation and Broken Promises

The most recent changes to dividend taxation in the Chancellors Spring Budget are a major attack on private investors. The simple change to reduce the Dividend Tax Allowance from £5,000 to £2,000 only a year after it was introduced will have a big impact on the tax paid by many investors. It's also another example of a broken promise about "no increases in taxes" made in the Conservative manifesto. The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has already had to back-track on the increases to ...

Share issues – And An Interesting Rule

Spring is in the air, and companies are clearly in a mood to raise cash. A lot of these have been share placings but the reasons given have been...

Employee Directors at Sports Direct

It seems that controversial company Sports Direct (SPD) are likely to become the first UK public company to have a worker on their board. They plan to appoint an elected "Worker's Representative" who will attend and speak at board meetings although they would not formally be appointed as a director. A spokesman for Sports Direct said: "Having explored all options we believe this is the best way to ensure the Workers' Representative is free to champion the interests of all staff. ...

It’s a Budget – But Not As We Know It

The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, delivered his Spring budget yesterday. But as most of the big changes have been moved to the Autumn, this was a "steady as you go" statement in essence. However there were some significant changes for private investors. The biggest is that the tax free allowance on dividends has been reduced from £5,000 to £2,000. So if you rely on dividend income, say in retirement, this will cost you substantially more - over £1,000 extra in tax in some ...

Secret Cautions by the FCA

The Financial Times reported this morning that it had obtained information from the FCA on the number of private warnings it had issued over the last 5 years using a Freedom of Information Act request. The answer given was that there had been 39 of them. ShareSoc has complained about this practice in the past, particularly with regards to AIM companies where the LSE has a similar approach. Indeed we complained about the use of private warnings in our submission to the ...