4 entries found with tag money.

Cheaper train tickets

rip off If you like getting ripped off then you'll love buying your train tickets via theTrainLine.com. Unlike the alternatives such as the South West Trains website or the First Great Western site (RailEasy etc...), they add "Columbus Travel Insurance" by default, a £2.50 charge for using a credit card and £1 for posting your tickets first class - more if you want faster delivery.

theTrainLine.com wasn't always like this but I noticed the difference having had to book various tickets recently. I know Exponent Private Equity acquired them in July 2006 for £168 million. Sounds a bit pricey to me - maybe that's the reason for this behaviour? Don't let them get away with it!

Tags: cheap, train, ticket, money

[13:18][comments 1]

Online tax deadline today

More than 150000 people filed their tax returns on deadline day last year. Looks like it's a similar story this time round - the website is "temporarily unavailable". So perhaps it's a good time to review some of the common errors made on self-assessment forms:

Common errors:

Failure to complete a separate supplementary page for each individual employment.
Entering employee personal pension premiums net instead of gross.
Entering the figure for capital expenditure allowances in box 3.14 of the self-employment pages instead of the figure for capital allowances.
Failure to complete Q19 of the main tax return where a repayment is due.If you do not opt for immediate repayment, the Revenue will leave the overpaid amount on your account and set that amount against future liabilities.
Entering your pay in box 1.8 of the employment pages but not entering tax deducted in box 1.11

Common reasons for rejecting a tax return:

Entering a "yes" tick on one of the questions 1 to 9 on page 2 of the tax return but failing to forward the relevant supplementary page.
Failure to complete the self-employment pages, particularly from box 3.74 onwards.
Putting detailed information on separate schedules instead of including the information.
Entering handwritten notes, such as "per accounts" or "information to follow", instead of entering actual figures.
Failure to sign and date the return.

Hope that helps!

Related: tax, money

Make money from taking photos

Rate yourself as a bit of a photographer and want some extra pocket money? You don't have to be a pro and work for a newspaper anymore. A couple of sites accept photos from Joe Public and will sell them for you for a fee. Check out iStockPhoto and CitizenImage.

iStockPhoto is the bigger of the two. My application is still being processed. This involves a little test to check that you've learnt their guidelines and a sample of three original 1600x1200 pixel resolution photos proving a modicum of ability.

CitizenImage is a much smaller outfit and it's pretty easy to get accepted. I have my doubts about whether there's much chance of getting any cash from them though. Their website gets less traffic than Nimisis.com (Alexa IS useful!)- but I hope I'm wrong. One thing that's confusing is that they say they'll PayPal me any earnings, but there's no PayPal email address to enter in the account settings. I use one address for PayPal and different ones to sign up to websites... not sure they've thought about that.

If this sounds like a good idea to you but you're stuck for good photo ideas, you might like to spend a few minutes at FlickrWatch. Or, if you like manipulating photos there's Warp.

See also: photo, money, iStockPhoto, CitizenImage

[08:29][have your say 6]

Claim back bank and credit card charges

Late fees and penalty charges are unfair and illegal so there's been a mad dash recently to claim back six year's worth of money from the bank. Some sites are profiteering a bit by saying they'll do it for you for a commission but there's no need! Step by step instructions including template letter you can print out are here. The best thing is it's almost guaranteed you'll get all your money back (including interest) from unfair bank and credit card charges because the banks are desperate not to appear in court. Not a single one has so far!

Tags: bank, late fee, credit card, money