HM Treasury Budgets and Financial News Archives

Picking the triple lock

Daniel Liddicott
Post written: Oct 2026 • Published: Oct 2026
3 min read

Picking the triple lock

At the tail end of September, Andy Burnham announced his plan to adjust the current triple lock on State Pensions from April 2030. This would bring an end to the current method of calculating annual State Pension increases, which has been in place since 2010.

What is the triple lock?

The triple lock, introduced in 2010 by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government, has ensured that the basic State Pension and the full new State Pension increase each year by the highest of these three measures:

Inflation
Average earnings growth in the UK
2.5%

From April 2030, the plan is to introduce an “adjusted triple lock”. The average earnings measure is largely being removed, with the revised system primarily ensuring that the State Pension rises by at least inflation or 2.5% each year. Unlike the other two measures, average earnings increases will no longer be used automatically should it be the highest in a given year. Instead, earnings will help to determine whether a further increase is needed to maintain the State Pension’s value relative to wages over time.

Why has this been announced?

The primary driver behind this change is to help fund a new National Care Service. The hope is that this will make the social care system work more like the NHS, with savings from the adjusted triple lock contributing towards the cost.

The current social care system is means-tested, with an individual’s financial circumstances assessed to determine how much they must contribute towards their care. In England, the lower capital limit is currently £14,250, although the rules vary depending on the type of care and other circumstances. It is not expected that all care costs would become completely free, though the clearest commitment expressed so far has been to provide free personal care for older people, based on need rather than ability to pay.

There is still much to be ironed out regarding exactly how this might work. Andy Burnham has stated that the intention is for the National Care Service to be fully funded, without the need for additional government borrowing.

How will this impact State Pension income?

In some years, the adjusted triple lock could result in smaller State Pension increases than under the current system. Taking the most recent State Pension increase in April 2026 as an example:

Average earnings growth was 4.8%.
Inflation (CPI) was 3.8%.

The 4.8% earnings figure was therefore used for the annual increase. The full new State Pension rose from approximately £11,973 to £12,548 a year.

Under a system based solely on inflation or 2.5%, the increase would instead have been 3.8%, bringing the annual amount to approximately £12,428. However, the adjusted triple lock proposed for 2030 would also include a mechanism to maintain the pension’s value relative to average earnings over time, so the long-term outcome would not be quite the same as simply removing earnings growth from the calculation.

Since the triple lock was introduced in 2010, inflation and average earnings growth have each determined several annual increases, while the 2.5% minimum has been used less frequently.

Therefore, it is quite possible that inflation will become the most commonly used measure for future increases. Much will depend on how inflation and wages evolve over the coming years. The adjusted triple lock is designed to protect State Pension income against inflation while ensuring that pensioners continue to share in wider earnings growth over time, without the pension consistently growing faster than average wages.

The precise outcomes will depend on how the new system operates in practice. The intention appears to be to balance protection of income for pensioners with the need to make the State Pension system more sustainable, and to help fund the proposed National Care Service.

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Picking the triple lockJemima Thomas2026-10-14T10:47:26+01:00

NS&I Big Data and the WOPR Problem?

Dominic Thomas
Post written: March 2026 • Published: July 2026
3 min read

NS&I Big Data and the WOPR Problem?

Adapting to the new world is far from straight-forward and NS&I are yet another publicly humiliated organisation that has failed to migrate data to a new system, costing billions. These sorts of problems are common and normally don’t come to light in the private sector, unless there has been a GDPR data breach.

Getting your money into someone’s system is easy, getting it out often isn’t as simple as it could be. That’s why when we review who we use to hold your investments we consider what is required. Customer service is something that is overlooked when assessing solutions, yet can become a significant barrier.

In order to provide “better” (cheaper) services to their millions (250m) of customers, NS&I undertook a £2bn Business Transformation Programme in 2020 to modernise their systems. Two years into the project red flags were all over the place, signalling that it would be unachievable, so in 2024 they rebooted the project and over £1.3bn more has been required. It certainly seems that the project is still unlikely to be delivered before 2028 and the Committee of Public Accounts have, I think it fair to conclude, torn the management team of NS&I to shreds, noting weak controls, poor and delayed decisions and frankly a naïve lack of understanding of the complexity of the issues. They are still not of the view that NS&I really are up to the task or owning the scale of the problem.

Most of us have a soft spot for the old Post Office, trusted by many families for generations. Sadly, sentiments are not the way to assess service, which is shaped by experience. Unfortunately, my experience of NS&I isn’t terribly good. Not too long ago they offered advisers the opportunity to digitally connect with client accounts, we have had minimal success with this, but honestly, it’s been something of a nightmare, with links and passwords not working. Registration processes have been awful.

You probably have seen in the news in late March that NS&I have made so many blunders that they are now in the position of having to pay significant compensation to savers whose accounts seem to be either inaccurate or missing. At the time of writing, there is nothing on NS&I’s website that even mentions the debacle.

Remember that NS&I are basically a front for HM Treasury to raise funds from the public safely; using the money to fund capital projects in the country. Essentially, you are lending your money to the Government.

If you have NS&I products, Premium Bonds, Savings Certificates, Cash ISA etc, please get in touch and we will attempt to include these in our reports to you and will hopefully provide you with additional support should you experience problems with them.

Here is a reminder of the dramatic warning about data security that many of us received over four decades ago in 1983 when a student (Matthew Broderick) hacked the NORAD defence system WOPR (War Operational Plan Response) in the film War Games. The issue isn’t really the technology, but the lack of good human thinking.

(War Games (1983), Directed by John Badham, Starring Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy and John Wood Produced by United Artists)

Let us know about your NS&I Accounts.

References:

Public Accounts Report Feb 2026: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/51662/documents/286154/default/

NS&I Transformation Programme: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9280/nsis-transformation-programme/

NS&I Board: https://nsandi-corporate.com/governance/who-we-are

NS&I Prize Checker: https://www.nsandi.com/prize-checker

War Games (1983): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/

What we do: https://www.solomonsifa.co.uk/what-we-do/

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NS&I Big Data and the WOPR Problem?Jemima Thomas2026-07-03T11:54:26+01:00

What exactly is everything else?

Dominic Thomas
March 2026 • 3 min read

What exactly is everything else?

You will probably have seen the adverts by Mastercard – for everything else, well it’s worth considering if there is anything else. We live in strange times, when our allies are behaving like enemies and our politicians are cow-towing to extremism or simply lacking any spine to stand against it.

The UK banking system relies heavily on both VISA and Mastercard, who run about 95% of payment systems. This reliance on a now unreliable system located in the US, with a President who is plainly idiotic and may order the system be “turned off”. It would seem that whilst both VISA and Mastercard are reassuring the UK of their commitment here and that they even welcome competition, we have seen how quickly US companies capitulate to Trump’s threats, putting up as much resistance as wet tissue paper.

I am sure you have observed the growing number of retailers that simply do not accept cash payments anymore. According to the market review (March 2025) in 2023 a whopping 61% of all transactions were using cards, which was 86% of their total value. There are countless adverts for payment machines and the push to Apple pay – which still really relies on the credibility of your original card. The LINK system is the UK’s ATM service to Building Societies and of course we can all do bank to bank payments.

It stands to reason that card payment systems help keep the economy ticking over and working smoothly, it also explains some of the inbuilt inflationary pressures with their additional cut being taken on each of those transactions. The cost of processing is something that many businesses complain about – which costs UK businesses around £170 million more than it did 7 years ago (despite the “competition”). The research unsurprisingly concluded that VISA and Mastercard were making profits substantially above normal profit margins of competitive markets, in essence it’s a cartel of two and another example of capitalism in the extreme.

The UK and European banking system is working on alternatives, the UK somewhat slowly and of course this isn’t helped by our departure from the EU. It is likely that solutions will be derived from digital currency, stablecoin, which offers up its own challenges.

It may be worthwhile reflecting on some of your purchases when shopping online or on the high street about how your money currently moves from your account to the retailer and begin considering your own alternatives. The Government to its credit, at least has a vision for payments.

For your amusement (or mine) here is the clip from Superman 3 (1983) directed by Richard Lester where Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor) an IT hacker, learns of the rounding down that banks do. I like to think that the Banks watched this and did it themselves.

References:

PSR Market Report March 2025: https://www.psr.org.uk/publications/market-reviews/mr22110-market-review-of-card-scheme-and-processing-fees-final-report/

UK Payments Plan vision: https://www.gov.uk/email/subscriptions/single-page/new?topic_id=payments-forward-plan

VISA – Annual report: https://annualreport.visa.com/home/default.aspx

Mastercard Annual Report: https://investor.mastercard.com/financials-and-sec-filings/annual-reports-and-proxy/default.aspx

What is Stablecoin? (Bank of England): https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/what-are-stablecoins-and-how-do-they-work

Superman 3: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086393/?ref_=nm_knf_t_1

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What exactly is everything else?Jemima Thomas2026-04-02T10:01:06+01:00

What’s Your Opinion About the Budget?

Dominic Thomas
Nov 2025 • 4 min read

What’s Your Opinion About the Budget?

There was a palpable sense of adolescent schoolchildren during the Budget. The team here couldn’t quite fathom the petulant behaviour of adults. It didn’t help women’s causes that the three main characters seemed like characters from St Trinian’s, Grange Hill and Mean Girls. You can decide who was who.

The short version – nothing much happened. The Budget is often an exercise in shuffling the deck attempting to please the public who want more for less, the media who want sensationalism and the markets which want certainty. If we are honest the “greater good” should prioritise the planet, society and the economy in that order, but little is achieved without money, so the reverse generally holds.

A main problem that any Government has is that roughly 10% of all taxes ends up going towards servicing interest on loans the UK has received, (it’s now almost as much as the entire spend on education). This includes paying you your interest on your UK Government Bonds and Gilts or National Savings. As it is just the interest (not actually repaying the debt) market responses to a Budget can increase this considerably.

I’m not sure that I can really comment on the Budget without getting ‘political’, but … I think it’s a pity that:

Young people attempting to buy a home were not given any good news
The Landlord tax will likely only increase rents, which seems entirely counter-productive
Tax relief on pensions could have been simplified to a single rate for all
Working taxes are punishing work and are overly complicated. If you want to get people spending, raise the personal allowance and give it to everyone irrespective of income. I’d be bold with this
NI needs to be sorted properly and with gumption, employers have seen enormous increases in staffing costs, which results in both inflation and reduced new hires as well as possibly redundancies. I don’t know what the solution is, but I think I would amalgamate it into income tax
Small farms haven’t had any relief of note, these people feed us and look after the countryside and are being squeezed on their own margins. I think the £5m exemption would seem fairer
There is about £11bn of uncollected corporation tax that is hidden offshore by multinationals. This can and should be collected
I’m curious to know how EV mileage will be monitored
We need to encourage entrepreneurs who take a risk to start a business and employ people in good jobs with good salaries which generate tax. So the cut in reliefs isn’t helpful
Clearly tax simplification isn’t that simple

To me, tax is a bit like someone who plants a tree for future generations to sit in its shade, whilst never doing so themselves. It’s a price paid to the future.

I don’t pretend to have the answers and it is very easy to criticise a Government. I rewatched the disastrous Kwasi Kwarteng Budget of September 2022. I would imagine that most people would actually agree with his policies to reduce income taxes and welcome many of his proposals at the time, but we are beholden to the servicing of debt on the Bond market. All Chancellors are subject to the wisdom of Proverbs 22:7 “The borrower is a slave to the lender”. [For your interest – it is generally believed that King Solomon wrote the Book of Proverbs.]

Anyway, perhaps you have some thoughts of your own?

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What’s Your Opinion About the Budget?Jemima Thomas2025-11-27T14:28:54+00:00

What happens if my bank goes bust?

Matt Loadwick
Nov 2025 • 3 min read

What happens if my bank goes bust?

It’s probably fair to say that consumer understanding of the banking system is varied. Many people (and I used to count myself as one of these) live their lives being under the impression that the money held in their personal bank accounts, the numbers they see on their bank statements or banking app at any one moment, represents their money alone, which is held in their separate bank account, for themselves, and themselves only.

In reality, this is not quite how it works. It is true to say that it is your money, in that it is money you are entitled to. However, what happens to your money when you deposit it with a bank is not quite the same as what some people may picture. Rather than it just sitting there waiting for you to use it, the bank keeps a small reserve and then lends out the rest to earn profit, charging interest on loans and mortgages etc. This means that there is some element of risk involved when depositing funds with a bank that probably isn’t at the forefront of our mind. This is probably because (living in the UK), we take the safety and robustness of the financial services industry as a given. All banks have safeguards in place to limit the risk of you not being able to access your money; holding reserves, managing cash flows, and borrowing if needed so that it can meet withdrawals on demand.

In the UK, authorised by the Bank of England’s regulatory arm, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), there are further protections for consumers in place. For the last eight years, savers with a UK-authorised bank, building society or credit union have benefitted from a deposit protection limit of £85,000, backed by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). This means that if your bank went bust, the FSCS would compensate you up to the value of £85,000, typically within seven days of a bank going out of business. It should be noted that this limit is per person, so in a joint account with a married couple, for example, the protected limit would be £170,000.

A new deposit limit of £120,000 per person has just been announced, taking effect from the 1^st of December. This is a 41% increase on the current limit, and was a larger increase than was expected within the industry. At the same time, the protection on ‘temporary high balances’ – which accounts for scenarios where a customer may temporarily have a large amount land in their account following a property sale, receiving an inheritance or an insurance policy payout – will be increased from £1m to £1.4m. Temporary high balances are protected for up to six months.

Without doubt, this is good news for consumers. The chief executive of the PRA, Sam Woods, said that the new maximum limit “will help maintain the public’s confidence in the safety of their money.”

There are concurrent concerns of course that the higher deposit protection limit could encourage more wealthy consumers to cache more money in savings accounts, which is contrary to the government’s objective of encouraging people to invest in the stock market, and in British companies in particular, with the aim of boosting the economy. There may be some validity to this, but purely from the perspective of individual consumers, this increased protection should absolutely be seen as a positive move.

There is no way of holding money that is truly free of risk. Holding too much money in cash means you subject yourself to inflation risk – ie the value of your money being eroded over time. Investing in the stock market means that you subject yourself to investment risk – ie the possibility that an investment’s return will differ from its expected return, including the potential loss of some or all of your initial investment. We’re here to help you decide which risks are best for you in a way that enables you to live the life you want to lead.

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What happens if my bank goes bust?Jemima Thomas2025-11-21T16:20:23+00:00

Autumn Budget 2025 (Latest Announcement)

Matt Loadwick
Sept 2025 • 2 min read

Autumn Budget 2025 (Latest Announcement)

The Treasury has announced that this year’s Autumn Budget will be delivered on 26^th November.

The chancellor makes a budget statement each year to MPs in the House of Commons, which presents the Government’s fiscal plans; stating which taxes will be raised (or lowered), and where public spending will be focused – on areas such as health, schools, transport and other public services.

Last year, this Labour Government’s first budget in office brought about some significant changes to taxation, including: announcing proposals to bring pensions into the estate for IHT purposes as of April 2027, increasing Capital Gains Tax rates to 18% & 24% (from 10% & 20%), increasing employer National Insurance Contributions, and lowering the threshold at which Stamp Duty Land Tax is paid for first time buyers from £425,000 to £300,000.

This year’s budget comes against the backdrop of a difficult economic landscape, with the cost of government borrowing reaching a 27-year high on the 2^nd September. The interest rate paid on 30-year gilts (bonds), referred to as the gilt yield, reached 5.72%, increasing the costs of borrowing for the government. This has led to criticism being levelled at Chancellor Rachel Reeves for her management of the economy, however it should be recognised that the UK is not alone in seeing borrowing costs rise, with costs also rising to their highest levels since 2011 on 30-year bonds in France, Germany and the Netherlands. There are various factors affecting global borrowing costs, such as Trump’s trade policies, geopolitical uncertainty and conflict.

The options for this Government are made more difficult by their pre-election pledges not to increase taxes for working people, whilst attempts to balance the books through welfare spending cuts were shown to be incredibly difficult to get past Labour MPs. It is therefore expected that some tax rises will be announced in the upcoming budget, but the Chancellor is going to have to be creative if she is to stick to her ‘rules’.

We’ll be keeping an eye on further news as it emerges in the coming weeks, and, as we do every year, the team at Solomon’s will be watching the budget announcement live on 26^th November. We’ll subsequently be keeping you fully informed on any announcements that affect your financial planning.

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Autumn Budget 2025 (Latest Announcement)Jemima Thomas2025-09-22T13:41:44+01:00

Would you be hit by a Wealth Tax?

Dominic Thomas
July 2025 • 4 min read

Would you be hit by a Wealth Tax?

We live in a world that is lurching towards fascism, which is largely due to the failure of centrist Governments to address the inequalities in our society. Whilst evidently aware that the UK overspends and hasn’t enough income each year to continue to provide the services that we expect, sadly this Government, much like those before it, is adamantly refusing to tax the very wealthy (those with more than £10m of assets). Instead, they are taking a wrecking ball to the working and middle classes and small businesses with tax upon tax.

Plans to raise even more from inheritance tax (IHT)

We know that inheritance tax is unpopular and probably not because of the amount it raises (which is a fraction of taxes, accurately less than 1% of the total £857,821m) but rather more to do with the approach that Government simply taxes you again, taking bites out of the same money. Your savings have already suffered income tax, capital gains tax and possibly stamp duty and VAT, yet also finally succumb to inheritance tax.

The Fake Exodus

The failure of the current Chancellor, who in fairness is just as ineffective as all her predecessors over the last 40 years or so, is unable to appreciate the biases that she has – an inability to believe that taxing a few people more will not cause them to leave the UK with a proper wealth tax. Pandering to right wing reports of an “exodus” of millionaires from the UK, which is an utterly inflated and bogus interpretation of the available data, we, like the Chancellor and most politicians, are being fed the lie that we must allow the very rich to pay minimal taxes or risk their departure and then share the burden between those who remain here. In fact, our tax system is deliberately structured this way. The firm touting the narrative, seized upon by billionaire media moguls, is Henley and Partners – a company that basically specialises in servicing the ultra-rich. Its equivalent is a gun manufacturer distorting violent crime data resulting in fear and widespread gun ownership (ker-ching!) and … more violent crime.

Reality Check – Millionaires care about a thriving society too

The reality is that only 0.2% (zero point two percent) of millionaires migrate. This rate has barely altered. The Tax Justice Network and Patriotic Millionaires UK have both attempted to address this grossly deliberately misleading narrative, providing data and facts, but UK and global media outlets are rarely concerned with anything other than sensationalism and stoking division. It wouldn’t be a surprise if you had never heard of either organisation. It might surprise you to learn that 80% of UK millionaires support a 2% wealth tax. These are people who have at least £4m of net assets, which does include some of our clients.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves, like those before her, has fallen for it and is pressing ahead with frozen allowances, increases to NI and tax rises for inheritance taxes in particular, impacting anyone with an investment-based pension fund (you) or a farmer (we have a few farmer clients but not many). Whilst Henley and Partners have backtracked on their false and inflammatory statements about an “exodus”, the media has not caught up and neither has Reeves.

As a result, the gradual reduction of the welfare state, the sense of distaste that most of us have for our ever-rising bills and taxes, the billionaires and ultra rich continue to build wealth and remain largely outside of scope. The constant failure of the UK Government and in particular Kier Starmer, leaves the door open for an irate electorate to vote for change, sadly the party that garners attention (thanks to a more than willing media) is that of Reform and the duplicitous Nigel Farage, who is a Trump mimic and fans the flames of fascism. For some people he is a protest vote; but the evidence suggests that he is not merely a protest. His rhetoric (backed by very wealthy individuals like Elon Musk and businesses) calls for dismantling the welfare state (including the NHS) and taking an authoritarian approach – threatening our democracy. On the rare occasions that he and his supporters admit that Brexit has failed, he states this is due to Government not going far enough (by which he means far right enough). Whilst the focus may initially be on “illegal immigrants” and abandoning plans to save our only planet, his “policies” or words will inevitably fail to address any real problems; his argument will always be that centrists (the vast majority of the electorate) didn’t allow him to go far enough, and so we are, in my view, at a crossroads. He also advocates “relaxing” gun laws and defended fascists (laughably calling them “concerned families”) attempting to burn down a hotel which may have housed asylum seekers. You know your history.

When new information comes to light, I am forced to rethink and change my mind – how about you? My role as your adviser is not to tell you how to vote, but to advise you about your wealth and how this aligns with your lifestyle and the general sense of wellbeing when contextualised within our society. Successive Governments have all largely failed most of us except the very wealthy which doesn’t include you (or me) despite our combined efforts to save, invest, grow, innovate, employ, repay debt and minimise taxes.

Instead, an employed person earning say £120,000 will have tax rates of 62% whereas I can assure you that someone with sufficient capital will be able to generate the same level of income with tax rates no higher than 28%. Taxing income and taxing wealth are not even vaguely comparable. You will note that in the diagram about tax receipts, most of those taxes are paid by working people under State Pension age.

I’m actually of no particular political persuasion, I attempt to vote for who I believe will serve our country and planet best, not necessarily my own interests. The choices today are highly influenced by media bias and false representation. Somehow, we have to pick our way through the noise and vote for decent people who hold everyone’s interests; not simply those who have a particular distorted view of monoculture, a faux respect for the protection of women and children (look at what they vote to cut) and conveniently forget our history whilst at the same time portraying a distorted view of the past. It is time for hope, not hate.

Ref: HMRC latest tax receipts: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-receipts-for-the-uk/hmrc-tax-receipts-and-national-insurance-contributions-for-the-uk-new-monthly-bulletin#headlines
Henley and Partners: https://www.henleyglobal.com/services
Tax Justice Network: https://taxjustice.net/press/millionaire-exodus-claim-backtracked-but-media-re-run-story-anyway/
Patriotic Millionaires UK: https://patrioticmillionaires.uk/
Who Owns the UK Media 2023 Report: https://www.mediareform.org.uk/blog/new-report-who-owns-the-uk-media
Farage defending Epping fascists: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-epping-asylum-hotel-protests-b2793289.html
Hope not Hate: https://hopenothate.org.uk/

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Would you be hit by a Wealth Tax?Jemima Thomas2025-08-13T10:19:38+01:00

Coming to your inbox – the latest tax headlines

Dominic Thomas
April 2025 • 4 min read

Coming to your inbox – the latest tax headlines

This morning (Wednesday 23rd of April) HMRC provided a regular release of information concerning tax receipts. It makes interesting reading for those of us who work with tax for a living, but for most, well … not so much. In essence, it covers the tax collected up to the end of the 2024/25 tax year, though there is always some adjustment made. Let’s start with the headline figure.

HMRC collected £857billion in tax for 2024/25 up 3.4% on the previous year. The trend is ever upwards for the collection of tax, at least from those of us not evading it.

The data in the chart above shows:

annual receipts over the last 20 years have grown from £402.9 billion in 2005 to 2006, to £857.0 billion in 2024 to 2025
receipts as a proportion of GDP over the last 20 years have grown from 28.4% in 2005 to 2006, to 29.8% in 2024 to 2025
the slight fall in 2008 to 2010 was due to a period of economic slowdown
receipts fell to £584.0 billion in 2020 to 2021, due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent government policies to support business and individuals

Even in my small world, the sector media focuses on what stories resonate. The item that grabbed the most attention recently was about inheritance tax “up to its highest level ever!” Whilst true that £8.2bn was paid in inheritance tax, this made up less than 1% of all tax receipts. This tells us a lot about the direction of politics – a focus on the 1% rather than the majority.

This is the chart that media focus on – the rising tide of inheritance tax.

Of course, this is a truth and clearly £8.2billion is a lot of money and we are all aware of the reality that more inheritance tax is going to be collected due to pensions falling within the scope of the tax from April 2027. It’s a tax we feel perhaps more directly as a large chunk of an estate heads off to HMRC for doing, well… very little.

However, in the context of all taxes paid, we can see where most (57%) of tax is generated – income tax, national insurance and capital gains tax. All of which will rise due to reduced or frozen allowances (capital gains and tax bands).

Here’s the political bit that you could sense was coming… income tax, national insurance and capital gains taxes are generally not paid by the very very ultra rich. Income taxes are reduced when derived as dividends and NI is only paid on earned income. Borrowed money (borrowing against your portfolio) is not taxed (though interest is charged, it is less than tax rates) and as shares are not sold unless valuations collapse, capital gains are not triggered. Add in some tax incentives for particular investments and you may not have any tax to pay at all…

Or to put it another way…

Ref*

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Coming to your inbox – the latest tax headlinesJemima Thomas2025-04-27T19:26:18+01:00

PENSION DEADLINE – YOUR STATE PENSION

Dominic Thomas
March 2025 • 3 min read

PENSION DEADLINE – YOUR STATE PENSION

I’ve had a few enquiries from people who have seen something in the news but aren’t clear about what it is. There is a sense of urgency and the information seems to be coming from reliable sites, so what is it?

‘BOOST’ YOUR PENSION

The tax year ends on 5^th April 2025 a few weeks away now. This is a deadline for people who wish to make up (backfill if you will) missing or incomplete years of national insurance contributions. The timeframe is closing, it’s a use it or lose it situation.

Why would you?

Firstly, this only applies to people under State Pension Age (SPA). To get a full State Pension, you need 35 years of National Insurance contributions, which for the record, technically can begin when you are 16 until you are 67 or older. So most people will have a ‘working career’ of 51 years to build 35.

If you have had breaks in your employment (maternity, child care, working abroad, redundancy, sickness) then you will likely find that you don’t have a full record. So on the assumption (red flag) that you work and pay NI until your State Pension Age, then you can estimate how many years you will have.

If you build more than 35 years, you do not get a bigger pension.

Time is Running Out

Until 5^th April 2025 you can buy the missing years (for a price) all the way back to 2006. Once the new tax year starts, you will only be able to make up incomplete years in the last six tax years.

You are smart enough to know that ‘the system’ is under some strain, so getting the data and paying for the missed years is going to be arduous.

So the first thing to do is check your NI record. You get a list of every tax year since you were 16 (fairly enlightening as an experience). If you spot missing years, perhaps there has been an error? If not, then estimate how many more full tax years you are likely to work for yourself or someone else until State Pension age.

WARNING: Estimating Your Lifetime

You have to give this some thought, a State Pension pays out for your lifetime, so if you die before getting one, well, that’s lost. As a warning, from both experience and research, most people underestimate how long they will live, so beware of that. You may also have a condition that shortens your life expectancy. So to pretend that this is an easy calculation is misleading.

The State Pension is very good value, it provides a guaranteed income for life, it is taxable but for most will fall within the current personal allowance for 0% tax.

Check your NI record, get a State Pension forecast – but remember that they assume you work until your State Pension age. Whilst you are there check the date of when that is for you. You can find the links in our resources section or start by clicking here.

Link to your NI records: https://www.gov.uk/check-national-insurance-record

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PENSION DEADLINE – YOUR STATE PENSIONJemima Thomas2025-03-07T16:05:43+00:00

Geopolitics and Market Volatility

Matt Loadwick
Feb 2025 • 3 min read

Geopolitics and Market Volatility

The stability, or otherwise, and volatility of global stock markets can be affected by a number of factors, which can be both economic and political in nature. In terms of economic factors, both UK and US economies are currently experiencing well-documented inflation, the result of rising costs of goods and services. This leads to increased borrowing costs, and to market uncertainty, as investors get spooked by high costs, and have a tendency to wait for prices to drop before investing.

In the UK, a glimmer of light appeared when the rate of inflation dropped by 0.1% in December compared to November, easing the pressure on Chancellor Rachel Reeves, and going some way to improve market confidence as the odds increase of the Bank of England reducing interest rates early this year. That said, it does feel like the current news cycle in the UK will provide reasons to be cheerful one day, followed by reasons to despair on the following, fuelling further volatility as markets react.

Global stock markets are also influenced by geopolitical events, where often the unpredictability surrounding such events can lead to increased volatility. As an example, the Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted in firms that had strong ties to Russia experiencing a significant fall in share prices.

It is also worth pointing out that politics and economics clearly do not exist in a vacuum, with both influencing each other symbiotically – as politicians drive their economic agenda, markets respond accordingly depending on the success (or otherwise) of their policies …

As the 47^th President of the United States was sworn in for the second time earlier in January, the world is braced for increasing geopolitical uncertainty with a Trump administration once again at the helm. Indeed, they have taken little time to give us a taste of what is to come over the next four years, creating headlines through divisive policies, such as the proposed mass deportations of illegal immigrants, withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement (compounded by plans to increase drilling for oil to promote as a key US export), pardoning the circa 1,500 Trump supporters who were charged over the 2021 US Capitol riots, and far-fetched rumours (we hope) of an interest in invading Greenland.

Such examples certainly give the impression that this administration may cause something of ‘a bumpy ride’ for markets in the coming years, particularly in the context of ongoing conflicts in the Middle-East and Ukraine. This is reflected in research undertaken by Scottish Widows, which suggests that geopolitics and volatility are likely to be among the top concerns for advisers in 2025.

If at some point you were to watch the value of your investments take a temporary drop, it is only human nature to feel a sense of nervousness. In the face of this expected volatility, we at Solomon’s are here as ever to encourage calm, and to ensure that our clients do not lose sight of the importance of planning for the long term.

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Geopolitics and Market VolatilityJemima Thomas2025-02-10T10:02:08+00:00

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