Ministers urged to close £2bn tax loophole in car finance scandal

Ministers are being urged to close a loophole that will allow UK banks and specialist lenders to avoid paying £2bn in tax on their payouts to motor finance scandal victims.Under the current law, any operation that is not a bank can deduct compensation payments from their profits before calculating their corporation tax, reducing their bill.UK banks have been blocked from claiming this relief since 2015, but it has now emerged that those due to pay redress as part of the pending £11bn car loan compensation scheme can exploit it because their motor finance arms are considered “non-bank entities”.The Guardian has learned this includes the operations of big high street names including Barclays and Santander UK, and Lloyds Banking Group, which is the UK’s biggest provider of car loans through its Black Horse division.Specialist lenders in the scandal, which include the lending arms of car manufacturers such as Honda and Ford, also fall outside this taxation rule

Cloudflare admits ‘we have let the Internet down again’ after outage hits major web services – as it happened

Technical problems at internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare today have taken a host of websites offline this morning.Cloudflare said shortly after 9am UK time that it “is investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs [application programming interfaces – used when apps exchange data with each other].Cloudflare has also reported it has implemented a potential fix to the issue and is monitoring the results.But the outage has affected a number of websites and platforms, with reports of problems accessing LinkedIn, X, Canva – and even the DownDetector site used to monitor online service issues.Last month, an outage at Cloudflare made many websites inaccessible for about three hours

BP to scrap paid rest breaks and most bank holiday bonuses for forecourt staff

BP is ditching paid rest breaks and most bank holiday bonuses for 5,400 workers in its petrol forecourts as it attempts to offset a planned rise in the independent living wage.The company has told workers in its 310 company-run forecourts that it will be changing their benefits in February. Workers at a further 850 BP-branded forecourts run by partners are on different pay deals.BP is an accredited member of the Living Wage Foundation’s fair pay scheme, under which employers commit to pay staff an annually set wage to meet living costs.Hourly pay for BP’s affected workers will rise to a minimum of £13

Financial markets now certain the RBA will hike interest rates in 2026

Financial markets are now pricing in a 100% chance the Reserve Bank will hike rates in 2026, in what would be a blow to mortgage holders but may take some steam out of an overheating property market.The latest forecasts represent a turnaround from just two weeks ago, when traders were factoring in an even chance that the next RBA move would be a cut by its May meeting.It comes as data showed inflation is now moving in the wrong direction, alongside this week’s national accounts and household spending figures which showed the economy is accelerating into the new year.Adam Donaldson, the head of interest rates strategy at the Commonwealth Bank, said “the market has come to the conclusion that the Reserve bank won’t be cutting rates any further”.“Basically, from February onwards, the market is starting to price some risk that rates will go up

UK first-time buyers in best position to snap up property in a decade, data shows

Buyers attempting to get on to the property ladder in the UK have received a lift, after figures from Halifax showed they are in the best position to snap up a home in a decade.Britain’s biggest mortgage lender said that the average price of a UK property hit a record high of £299,892 in November, after a marginal month-on-month rise.However, Halifax said when property prices were compared with average incomes, affordability was at its strongest since late 2015.The lender added that taking into account higher interest rates – the average two-year fixed mortgage rate is 4.85%, according to Moneyfacts – mortgage costs as a share of incomewere at their lowest level in about three years

‘Tough market conditions’ hit UK half-year retail sales at Frasers Group

The owner of Sports Direct and Flannels has said sales have fallen at its UK retail businesses amid heavy discounting by rivals and “very subdued” consumer confidence.Frasers, which is controlled by the former Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley, said sales at its UK sports division were down 5.8% in the six months to 26 October to £1.3bn despite growth at the main Sports Direct chain because of “planned decline” at its Game outlets and the Studio Retail online arm.Michael Murray, the chief executive of Frasers Group, which also owns House of Fraser department stores, Jack Wills and dozens of other brands and a number of shopping centres, said “market conditions are tough” and “consumer confidence is very subdued”