46 h. ago What you needed to know about tax in 2025: The top questions answered by our expert HEATHER ROGERS

Heather has fielded questions about accidental landlords, setting up a trust for a vulnerable adult, and avoiding inheritance tax if you own a listed building this year.

Politics

4 d. ago Six most important pension questions of 2025 answered by STEVE WEBB

Interest in pensions was intense this year and our star columnist Steve Webb fielded many questions - on the state pension age, tax-free cash, artificial intelligence, and more.

Politics

6 d. ago Rowing’s answer to snowcross, BMX and beach volleyball is coming to LA

Beach Sprints are shaking up this most strait-laced of sports and may be heading to a coastal town near youAt a point when most rowers are pounding away on rivers in the wind and rain through the dark winter months, a new breed are honing their skills in brighter climes surrounded by sun, sand and waves, all the while dreaming of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.Out of 17 sports that proposed an extra discipline to the International Olympic Committee, rowing came out on top with its Beach Sprints format added to the LA 2028 programme. While many may have noticed the addition of five new sports in baseball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash, a mini-revolution is happening on the water within a sport that will no longer have a lightweight category but will have five coastal rowing events in 2028. Continue reading...

Politics

6 d. ago I have a final salary pension with a firm that might go bust

I received a letter from the scheme which said it might need to be taken over by the Pension Protection Fund. Am I trapped in a failing scheme with my money at risk?

Economics

7 d. ago Flamboyant, furious and full of hope: CMAT is the sound of 2025 | John Harris

The Irish singer-songwriter does what the best musicians do: perfectly crystallising their time while inspirationally taking a stand against itWhat has it felt like to be alive in 2025? The basic answer probably touches on a few aspects of the 21st-century experience. One is the horror and conflict that seem to define the news almost every day. Another centres around the material pressures that increasingly grip supposedly peaceful countries: the never-ending cost of living crisis, and the impossibility for millions of people of a secure job, a dependable home and some halfway viable idea of the future.Something else demands a mention: the all-pervading mixture of absurdity, nastiness and anger fostered by the internet. Bigotry runs rampant. What we still rather laughably call social media now seem to operate on the basis that the ideal story mixes wildly improbable elements with the kicking-up of moral outrage (witness that ghoulish “online content creator” Bonnie Blue, who, having...

Politics

1 week ago My wife has ten pension pots, how can she sort them out? STEVE WEBB replies

Due to various contract roles over the years, she has numerous pensions with different providers scattered around and doesn't have a record of all of them.

Politics

2 w. ago Can YOU solve GCHQ's Christmas quiz? Spy chiefs release seven fiendishly tough brainteasers (but don't fret, we've got the answers...)

Director Anne Keast-Butler, who is the first woman to lead GCHQ, held a competition for over 500 schoolchildren to design the cover of the spy chief's Christmas card.

Politics

2 w. ago The Knowledge | Which football clubs have pictures of people on their badges?

Plus: players popping up randomly on TV, triple-doubles in names and which match featured the most Ballon d’Or winners?Mail us with your questions and answers“While scanning the Champions League fixtures, I noticed that Pafos FC of Cyprus have a person’s face on their badge (Cypriot freedom fighter Evagoras Pallikarides),” writes Paul Savage. “Other than faces of legendary characters (Ajax), do any other badges have people on them?”This was one of the more popular Knowledge questions of 2025. We received dozens of answers – thanks one and all – that referenced clubs all around the world. In no particular order, here they are. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Why isn't there a special allowance so pensioners on low incomes don't pay tax? STEVE WEBB replies

I'm confused over what is going on with the state pension and tax once it goes through the tax-free personal allowance.

Economics

3 w. ago 3.3m pension savers facing hit with salary sacrifice changes

HMRC said an estimated 7.7 million employees currently use salary sacrifice to make pension contributions.

Economics

3 w. ago ‘I don’t take no for an answer’: how a small group of women changed the law on deepfake porn

The new Data (Use and Access) Act, which criminalises intimate image abuse, is a huge victory won fast in a space where progress is often glacially slowFor Jodie*, watching the conviction of her best friend, and knowing she helped secure it, felt at first like a kind of victory. It was certainly more than most survivors of deepfake image-based abuse could expect.They had met as students and bonded over their shared love of music. In the years since graduation, he’d also become her support system, the friend she reached for each time she learned that her images and personal details had been posted online without her consent. Jodie’s pictures, along with her real name and correct bio, were used on many platforms for fake dating profiles, then adverts for sex work, then posted on to Reddit and other online forums with invitations to deepfake them into pornography. The results ended up on porn sites. All this continued for almost two years, until Jodie finally worked out who was doing i...

Politics

3 w. ago HMRC pensions update as £30,000 scheme can be exempt from certain taxes

A taxpayer had a question about paying into their pension

Economics

3 w. ago Why doesn't Chancellor raid public sector pensions instead of always coming after private sector workers? STEVE WEBB replies

Those of us who saved hard risk seeing the rug pulled from under us, being left financially vulnerable. We don't have the luxury of income certainty in retirement

Economics

4 w. ago Plan to spare pensioners £58 income tax 'risks being unfair and unworkable', says Steve Webb

The Government is going to explore ways to avoid pensioners having to pay a small amount of tax should the state pension start exceeding the personal allowance.

Economics