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Money Box: Insurance set-up fees; tax penalties; flight compensation; council tax

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01/02/2014

Insurance set-up fees; tax penalties; flight compensation; council tax

BBC Radio 4 - Money Box, Insurance set-up fees; tax penalties; flight compensation; council tax

Paul Lewis investigates set-up fees for cancelling insurance even before cover starts.

Set-up fees for cancelling insurance even before cover starts; late tax filing penalties; airline compensation lost in fog; and more low income families face council tax rises.

When you take out insurance you get a cooling off period in which you can cancel without penalty. But some firms are charging set up fees. How much is a fair charge for their services? And how prominent should warnings be to potential policy holders?

It's estimated that more than a million people will have missed the deadline for filing their tax return. So what happens now? For some, the deadline has been extended until midnight February 14th. Or if you registered recently, you should get a letter from HMRC giving you three months from that date to file. If you continue not to file after the deadline there are further penalties. And if you owe any tax, it had to be paid by midnight Friday or interest will be charged. Money Box runs through the options. 

If your plane is delayed more than three hours taking off from a UK airport or an EU based airline landing at a UK airport then you may be entitled to compensation. But you may not - depending on whether your airline claims the delays were due to unforeseen circumstances. The body charged with enforcing the law - the Civil Aviation Authority - is still getting to grips with a big backlog of cases. So what happens now if airlines still refuse to pay out?

More than a quarter of a million low income households will face big rises in the council tax they pay in 2014/15. Research by the New Policy Institute has found that one in four councils in England is planning to make these residents pay a bigger contribution to their council tax. The average rise will be £1.50 a week.

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