Ofgem Back Billing and Pensions and IHT

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The energy regulator Ofgem says suppliers must take urgent action to find out how widespread a problem back billing is. It's when suppliers send out new bills for electricity and gas from longer than 12 months ago, a practice that was banned in 2018. The development follows Money Box's investigation which discovered thousands of people have wrongly been receiving back bills. Paul Lewis interviews Tim Jarvis, Director General of Markets at Ofgem.

And unspent pension pots will be subject to inheritance tax from 2027. This change, announced by Rachel Reeves in the Autumn Budget, means most unused pension funds will be included within the value of a person’s estate for Inheritance Tax purposes from 6th April 2027. Money Box has been getting lots of emails from listeners who're now reconsidering their financial planning and are worried and upset about the new rules. The Treasury told us it continues to incentivise pensions savings for their intended purpose of funding retirement instead of them being openly used as a vehicle to transfer wealth. But how will the new rules work?

Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporters: Dan Whitworth and Sarah Rogers Researcher: Eimear Devlin Editor: Jess Quayle

(First broadcast 12pm Saturday 22nd February 2025)

Transcript

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0:00.0	What do Selena Gomez, LeBron James and Martha Stewart all have in common?
0:06.2	Their lives and fortunes are all being discussed in season three of Good Bad Billionaire.
0:10.9	Yes, the podcast exploring the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's wealthiest individuals is back.
0:16.9	I'm Zing Singh and I'm Simon Jack.
0:18.6	Each week we take a closer look at some of the world's mega rich.
0:21.8	And try to decide together whether we think they're good, bad or just another billionaire.
0:26.5	Good bad billionaire.
0:27.5	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:31.5	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:35.2	Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast. Inflation rose this week, but what is
0:40.4	pushing it up? And listeners want to know what to do to reduce the inheritance tax the government
0:45.7	plans to charge on their unused pensions. But first, electricity and gas suppliers have been warned
0:51.8	they'll be fined if they continue to send out bills to customers
0:55.2	for money they have no right to collect. The energy regulator, Offgem, has told Moneybox,
1:00.6	it sent this warning to the chief executives and also demanded to know how many people have been
1:05.7	sent these so-called back bills. As recent listeners will know, energy suppliers aren't allowed to send out new
1:12.3	bills for electricity and gas, which was used more than 12 months beforehand. That was banned in
1:17.7	2018, but as we've reported over the last three weeks, it's still happening to thousands or,
1:23.6	more likely tens of thousands of people. In his first interview, following our investigation,
1:28.9	an off-GM director stressed that suppliers must stop doing it
1:32.3	and give people their money back.
1:34.6	We'll hear that interview in a few minutes,
	...

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