Best savings account?

Yaayuh! said:
I wonder how many people in here are going to actually do their tax on their interest this year? :p
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I do mine every year, but savings don't amount to enough interest to draw taxes (that's a good problem to have!). When it gets close then the rest will go to ISA or Vanguard.
 
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I'd need to double my current savings before I need to start thinking about filling in a tax return and there's minimal chance of that with a 3 month old in the house now :D
 
beachBOYken said:
Think I might need to do a tax return this year, no idea how I go about that, so might just wait till I get the tax man knocking on my door:D
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Just go to self assessment on HMRC site, register, and then it asks you questions on your income. A lot of the questions would yield a No answer for a PAYE person, then you skip through like 5 questions that follows.

Should take like 20mins really, and at the end it tells you how much you owe. It helps if you have all your finances already in front of you, like your annual pay total, how much interests you earned, or shares etc already in like a spreadsheet.

You can save it in the middle at any time if you need to, so you don't need to start again.
 
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beachBOYken said:
Think I might need to do a tax return this year, no idea how I go about that, so might just wait till I get the tax man knocking on my door:D
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You can setup an account (if you don't already have one) and report minor things such as this directly to HMRC online.
I believe the banks still report the numbers themselves anyway however.

IMO your far better off doing this than ending up behind (potentially) since they first action would probably tick the SA (self assessment) box.
But if your sure all your banks report it you should be fine to just keep quiet.

SA isn't that hard now to do online, but you dont really want to have to do it unless you really need to. Most people as long as reasonably organised and with normal simple tax matters can probably do SA in 1-2 hours.
Its still 1-2 hours you don't need to waste if you can avoid it.
 
Its also worth doing SA if your making seperate private pension payments as this will also earn you a tax rebate / reduce your tax bill.
 
beachBOYken said:
Think I might need to do a tax return this year, no idea how I go about that, so might just wait till I get the tax man knocking on my door:D
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Get ahead of it, because you could make an ad-hoc pension contribution to get rid of it. I.e. you may pickup £300 more in pocket but pay some outrageous tax. To "lose" the £300 cash in hand you could gain £700 odd in pension contributions.

If you are claiming tax free childcare the numbers are monumental, i.e. £300 extra would COST you £1700...
 
Finners said:
I was under the impression that banks report your savings and your tax code is adjusted to reflect how much tax you owe on savings. That's for someone on PAYE of course.
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That's what I thought, my tax code does get adjusted quite often. If you don't pay tax it doesn't matter.
 
Finners said:
I was under the impression that banks report your savings and your tax code is adjusted to reflect how much tax you owe on savings. That's for someone on PAYE of course.
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Slam62 said:
That's what I thought, my tax code does get adjusted quite often. If you don't pay tax it doesn't matter.
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Some banks do, a lot of the Fintech ones do not (i.e. Chip, Chase). Recall how little information you had to supply to open those accounts in the first place...
 
dLockers said:
Get ahead of it, because you could make an ad-hoc pension contribution to get rid of it. I.e. you may pickup £300 more in pocket but pay some outrageous tax. To "lose" the £300 cash in hand you could gain £700 odd in pension contributions.

If you are claiming tax free childcare the numbers are monumental, i.e. £300 extra would COST you £1700...
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I thought that if you paid the money into a pension fund then it was topped up through the system by however much you would have paid, ergo you don't have to do anything.
 
ci_newman said:
Some banks do, a lot of the Fintech ones do not (i.e. Chip, Chase). Recall how little information you had to supply to open those accounts in the first place...
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Are you sure about that, how would hmrc ever know under those circumstances?
I'm pretty sure all banks have to do stringent identity checks because of money laundering rules.
 
Slam62 said:
I thought that if you paid the money into a pension fund then it was topped up through the system by however much you would have paid, ergo you don't have to do anything.
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Not if you are a higher rate tax payer :) It's only topped up by the basic rate amount, i.e. 20%.
 
Actually you are correct,

From chase
'You'll need to tell HMRC yourself if you need to pay tax on your interest. If you're a UK taxpayer, you might get the UK Personal Savings Allowance, which basically lets you earn some interest before tax. How much your tax-free amount is depends on your tax rate. If you pay the basic rate of income tax, you can earn £1,000 in interest before tax. '
Something else to sort out then
 
However from an hmrc community discussion

'
You do not need to notify HMRC.

Once any interest is generated, the providers will notify HMRC of the amounts and any split for the income.

Thank you. '
 
Actually it appears if the income is under 10000 a year you don't have to do a self assessment.

Hmm just checked and it could soon kick in with rates rising.
 
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Slam62 said:
I thought that if you paid the money into a pension fund then it was topped up through the system by however much you would have paid, ergo you don't have to do anything.
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If you are close to the boundaries i.e. 40%/45%/100k tapering, but not meaningfully over it, it makes sense to make additional contributions. E.g. if you were £100 into the 40% boundary, you'd only get £60. If you do an additional contribution of £100 to your pension, you get the £100 for the cost of £60 out of pocket. At £100k it gets really meaningful as £100 over £100k only gives you ~£44, so to "buy" £100 pension only costs you £44.

ci_newman said:
Some banks do, a lot of the Fintech ones do not (i.e. Chip, Chase). Recall how little information you had to supply to open those accounts in the first place...
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Worth noting the "grey" area (in the dLockers SA anyway :D) where declaring ANY interest will impact your tapering allowance. So technically even the £500 freebie can ding you quite a big. I don't bother declaring any interest if it is under £500 to ensure I don't pay any tax on it (as per the website).
 
So that was interesting (for me anyway)
In March I opened a Sainsburys easy access cash ISA to dump some money in there before end of tax year, at 2.91%.

Obviously since then that rate has become uncompetitive , and for new customers Sainsburys are offering 3.7%.

So I emailed them to ask why my rate hadn't changed to reflect the higher rate. I got a response saying that existing customers can request the higher rate, and that I am now on the higher rate.
Is that normal practice that existing customers have to ask for better rates rather than automatically being adjusted ?

So if any of you have a Sainsburys ISA, get on the phone/web chat!!
 
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