I missed a great event by the Isle of Man JCC a few days ago, but was lucky enough that the speakers made their slides available. The talk was given by Stuart Cowan and Peter Robertson from Ramsey Crookall & Co. Ltd. and it’s packed with interesting bits. Check it out: The Illusion of Recovery – Presenation to the JCC (IOM) View more presentations from Owen Cutajar.
I just came across an interesting article that points out that Americans are cheating more on their tax return than they used to in the past. 13% of those surveyed said cheating is acceptable, according to an annual poll conducted for the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board. That’s up 4% from 2008. 4% percent of Americans said they cheat on their taxes “as much as possible,” up 1% from the year before. They’re interesting statistics, but worrying ones for tax…
An interesting article in This Is Money talks about that’s happening in the UK and how the increase in government spending is digging a black hole that’s going to be really hard to get out of. It’s almost like people responsible for spending should be looking at weight loss products for their budget. Government income in the UK is down, but spending is up, a situation that is just unsustainable. It’s an interesting article and worth reading, if you’re interesting…
As was widely anticipated, it seems like the UK Interest Rates have remained fixed at 0.5%, the historic low they had dropped to in March this year. This is good news for people on tracker mortgages as it means their mortgages are still costing them very little. However, there’s a concern for home owners that new mortgages at those rates are impossible to find and people are getting locked into higher rate mortgages. Does this translate into more profit for…
It’s was with great relief that the tax authorities in the Isle of Man found out last night that they weren’t on the OECD tax haven list. There’s been work over the last couple of years to make sure we don’t get blacklisted and the announcement was the culmination of all their efforts. These are the countries that were given the all clear: Argentina Australia Barbados Canada China Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Guernsey Hungary Iceland Ireland…
I’ve just got a promotional email from one of the internet banks I bank with and it interestingly had a table showing the drop in Bank of England interest rates over the last year: Bank of England Base Rates Effective from Base rate 10 April 2008 5.00% 8 October 2008 4.50% 6 November 2008 3.00% 4 December 2008 2.00% 8 January 2009 1.50% 5 February 2009 1.00% 5 March 2009 0.50% It must be pretty distressing for people living off…