BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[Stanley]

Wise woman Moh. Too much of this about. You did the right thing, delete immediately without opening.

[Tizer]

The trouble is that banks are making matters worse because they are increasingly sending email messages to their customers. They claim that they won't send important things by email, such as notification of your account being hacked but they shower us with other types of email message. They are supposed to put your post code at the top of any of those messages so that at least you know it's not simply spam.

[Stanley]

Add to that the energy companies wanting all customers to do their billing, accounts, meter reading and appointments on line. This trend, like self service tills in supermarkets, is designed to do one thing, cut down on the numbers of staff. This is why I favour leaving any arrangement of accounts alone as I have a theory that the mistakes occur when any alteration is made in the process.How many people took the advice to switch to Eon last week and then found that their existing supplier had dropped the gas price as well? I am yet to be convinced that switching leads to any long term saving.

[Stanley]

There was a good example of the Law of Unintended Consequences in an interview on You and Yours on BBC R4 yesterday. A young couple with good jobs and prospects in the NHS who have a respectable monthly income and are able to save are blocked from getting a mortgage because of the debt they still have on their Student Loan Account. As they said, nobody pointed out this consequence to them when they were offered the help. How many are in this trap?

[Tizer]

I've always said the student loans were going to end in tears. Saddling youngsters with that amount of debt at the start of their adult lives is bound to cause all sorts of difficulties and this is one of them.

Here's a bank story...Mrs Tiz went to Nationwide for an appointment today to set up a new bank account to help with keeping parents' money separate under her Power of Attorney. They'd made a one and half hour appointment for it and she had to sit and watch two videos explaining about setting up an account. We had our business accounts with this Nationwide branch for nearly 20 years before retiring and they know Mrs Tiz well but they were very apologetic and said company policy is that it's now obligatory to be shown the videos!

[Stanley]

I sympathise with Janet... I have just sat here for 30 minutes unpicking a British Gas communication letting me know they are automatically renewing my Home Care 200 agreement for the boiler and CH system. However, they didn't simply tell me that, they wrapped it up in a lot of jargon and legalese that I had to read carefully to make sure they weren't moving me on to a more expensive package.... GRRRRR!!

[Tizer]

Mrs Tiz has corrected me...she was forced to watch 6 (six!) short videos!

One of the language abuses that really annoys me and is going to cause some serious misunderstandings in the future is the wrong use of `substitute'. As an example, I've just read something that states: "He came in from the muddy street and substituted his boots for his slippers." That sentence means he'd been out in the mud with his slippers on and then came in and put his boots on! It should be "substituted his slippers for his boots". Keep an eye open for the mistake, it's becoming common.

[PanBiker]

Mrs Tiz has corrected me...she was forced to watch 6 (six!) short videos!

I think I would be telling them where to get off and going elsewhere.

[Stanley]

There's only one way to deal with a bank. Have as little to do with them as possible and never ask them to do anything for you apart from manage a simple current account. The problems Mrs Tiz had with the bank would apply at all the major banks. No win situation....

[Whyperion]

I sympathise with Janet... I have just sat here for 30 minutes unpicking a British Gas communication letting me know they are automatically renewing my Home Care 200 agreement for the boiler and CH system. However, they didn't simply tell me that, they wrapped it up in a lot of jargon and legalese that I had to read carefully to make sure they weren't moving me on to a more expensive package.... GRRRRR!!

Double check , they sometimes offer a low rate in first years then bump it up thereafter , if it has increased consisderably, call them , say you can get a better deal elsewhere (npower for example ) , they might drop the charge down a bit.

[Tizer]

We check everything before renewing now - loyalty is a dirty word as far as the service industries are concerned. But just think how much time we have to waste doing what the government thinks solves our problems - forever switching from one company to another. And think of all the manpower wasted in those companies by being devoted to cancelling accounts and to seeking `new' customers (i.e. ones they had a few years ago but lost by bumping up their charges.

[Tizer]

Well what a surprise!...
BBC, 9 February 2015
`HSBC bank 'helped clients dodge millions in tax''
"Banking giant HSBC helped wealthy clients across the world evade hundreds of millions of pounds worth of tax, the BBC has learned. Panorama has seen accounts from 106,000 clients in 203 countries, leaked by whistleblower Herve Falciani in 2007. The documents include details of almost 7,000 clients based in the UK."..."The bank now faces criminal investigations in the US, France, Belgium and Argentina, but not in the UK, where HSBC is based."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31248913

[Stanley]

Anyone who reads Private Eye saw this evidence a long time ago and the criticisms of the Noble Lord Greene. What surprised me was that they didn't give passing mention to the fact that many other banks and in particular the big accountancy firms have been, and are doing, the same thing. Perhaps we need similar whistle-blowers in these firms as well.....

[Tizer]

Speak of the ddevil...
`UBS confirms fresh tax evasion probe in the US' (10 February 2015, BBC)
UBS has confirmed it is being investigated by US authorities into whether it helped Americans evade taxes through investments banned in the US. The Swiss bank said US regulators were investigating potential sales of so called "bearer bonds". These bonds can be transferred without registering ownership, enabling wealthy clients to potentially hide assets. "We are cooperating with the authorities in these investigations," the bank said. The fresh investigation by the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York and from the US Securities and Exchange Commission comes after UBS paid $780m (£512m) in 2009 to settle a separate Justice Department tax-evasion probe. And it comes as authorities in a range of countries are considering examining HSBC's actions in helping more than 100,000 wealthy individuals avoid paying tax. UBS made the announcement as it revealed a better-than-expected 13% rise in fourth quarter net profit to 963m Swiss francs (£683.9m)."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31349135

[Stanley]

The short answer is that they are all at it! Read Piketty for the connection between high net worth and the ability to pay for imaginative ways of reducing tax. Very lucrative for the banks and accountants....

[Tizer]

This is not about bankers but another set of rogues, those big corporations that provide outsourcing services for the Government departments, in this case an American company called Concentrix doing work for HMRC. This news has been hovering in the background and building up for a week or two but it's now finally been spotted by the journos at The Independent. Concentrix is supposed to be `making sure that people are getting the correct tax credits' which sounds like they are doing us a favour but it's really more about leaning on people who they think aren't paying enough. Concentrix's own employess say they are under pressure to " open between 40 and 50 new tax-credit investigations every day and often don’t have time to check whether the allegations they are making stack up."...."Staff at Concentrix’s office in Belfast, where the contract is based, have told The Independent that they haven’t been given enough training to differentiate between genuine claims for tax credits and fraudulent ones. They also say they are being encouraged to hit a target of making 20 decisions a day, or about three an hour, on whether to stop, amend or leave a tax claim unchanged. Staff say they often don’t have enough time to review all the relevant data before making a decision. They also allege they have not been given enough training to make effective decisions."..."One worker on Concentrix’s tax-credit contract, who asked not to be named, said that in his own estimate about six in 10 investigations into people suspected of not declaring that they’re living with a partner are opened in error." Many people think the letters they receive are hoaxes and that they are being scammed.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 60745.html

[Stanley]

Successive governments since the 18th century have 'improved' the tax system by adding new complex legislation and we have now reached the stage where, combined with the staff reductions after computerisation, we have reached a stage where there is not enough experienced staff to deal with clients. Outsourcing doesn't help this. For over 40 years my tax liability was decided by two skilled men, my accountant and the local tax inspector talking face to face over a desk in Nelson. In all that time I never had a single problem. They knew and trusted each other and I have little doubt my accounts were always nodded through. That's what is missing now....
On HMRC and tax evasion, everyone should read the first page of Private Eye. They detail the warnings they have given over the years and flag up meetings between HSBC and Osborne as early as May 2010 after the 'Lagarde List' first surfaced. Godron doesn't escape attention either. Some interesting news about Clegg Snr. and his connections with tax evasion..... There is also an comparison of the number of plumbers taken to the cleaners for dodgy accounting compared to the big fish on the list.... Guess who got hit the hardest! Required reading if you want some damning insights into the whole affair. The conclusion is obvious, HMRC have leaned over backwards to avoid prosecuting the real culprits. As for the Noble Lord Greene..... This not an equitable system.

[plaques]

Can anyone remember when the UK tax payer lent Ireland £3.2 Billion? Here's a bit of a reminder.

A total of £3.2bn was loaned by the UK to the Republic as part of an international rescue package of the country's collapsing economy.
A report from the Treasury published this week said it would be March 2021 before the loan's term was up as the final tranche of money was paid to Ireland a year ago. (ref 2014)
Just think of how useful this amount of money would be to us now that we are deep in austerity measures. We could have started another aircraft carrier or a nuclear submarine or perhaps, god forbid, paid some really outstanding bankers bonuses.

[Stanley]

Dead right P, couldn't agree more. In 2008 I said it was a mistake chucking the money at the British banks and I haven changed my mind. Doing the same for other counties is even more stupid. The reason was of course that UK capital holders would have suffered losses if the Irish banks went down. Looking after the lads again! We must be soft in the head letting big money get away with it.

[Tizer]

More trouble for HSBC, according to The Independent today...
`HSBC accused of 'engaging a systematic and profitable collusion in serious criminal activity''
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 62838.html
"In a damming intervention Lord Ken Macdonald, who led the Crown Prosecution Service until 2008, said there existed “credible evidence” of HSBC’s involvement in “grave” cross border crimes that should have been the subject of urgent and “sustained criminal investigation” in the UK. Lord Macdonald added that a decision by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs not to investigate HSBC for its role in facilitating possible tax evasion was “seriously legally flawed”."

(Silly me, I thought the word was `damning', not damming'. But then I'm not a top UK newspaper editor so I must be wrong!)

[Stanley]

'Damming', yet another example of the folly of sacking competent sub-editors.....

We seem to be concentrating on HSBC simply because of the records that surfaced but there is plenty of evidence that all the banks and big accountancy firms were heavily involved. Private Eye has been banging on at this for years but for some esoteric reason the evidence uncovered by their excellent investigative journos is discounted. Or could it be that the influence these institutions have is so enormous that it is the 'sin that shall not be named'.... The system is too complicated to allow any prosecution to be pursued economically, look at the costs involved. We should attack it from the other end, make sure that any successful prosecution automatically carries a gaol sentence for whoever the managers were at the time. At the moment they are immune.....

[Stanley]

Off piste I know but during a discussion yesterday of HSBC on Radio 4 the presenter asked what could be 'deducted' from the evidence. I suspect she meant 'deduced'. Only one letter but a world of difference. More 'damming' evidence of falling standards!
We've talked about this before but listening to the woolly answers and obfuscation about sources of advise available to pensioners considering taking advantage of the new rules on withdrawing money I can't help thinking that we are watching a potential disaster unfolding.

[Tripps]

I see that HSBC profits are down by a massive 17%.
They only made $18,000,000,000. That's $18 billion.

[Tizer]

The `Shady Transactions Department' must have had a day off (or an off day).

[Stanley]

See THIS for a report on the latest troubles in RBS. How long do we put up with this?