Have Your Say: March 8

I have made formal complaints to both chief executives. Perhaps ridicule and criticism via the respected press is the only way to make these institutions change. Best of luck and thanks for trying to improve things.
KN Newcastle upon Tyne

I COMMEND you for highlighting the scandal of banks’ behaviour towards elderly customers. I hold a POA for my mother. She has Alzheimer’s and has just become resident in a care home.

Two banks were excellent at registering my POA, but it was a horror story with the other two. The general tone of all my conversations with one of them was positive — the staff really wanted to help — but ultimately a simple process of registration took an age and was upsetting. It was difficult for me when they asked to speak to mum or inquired as to what her problem was. Also, the people I spoke to did not seem to understand the law and practice around POAs.

The almost comical side to this was when they sent the smallest pre-paid envelope you could imagine for me to post the 14-page POA to them.

Even now, some weeks after my POA was registered, they have not acted on my instruction to post all correspondence to me, rather than mum. I will be closing this account.

The other bank had a call centre that was not friendly or helpful in any way. I posted the POA with the form four weeks ago and I am still waiting for it to be processed. The form, available on the internet, is a disgrace — difficult to complete and it asks an inappropriate question.

Most people have POAs for good reason. They do not want to be asked inappropriate questions, asked about their relation, nor made to complete impossible forms, particularly at a time of emotional stress. Financial institutions must do better.
CY Hertford

MY MOTHER died in 2013, but managing her affairs with a big bank and two building societies was an unwelcome nightmare. As she became less able, I sold her house and invested the money to pay her care home costs.

When the house was sold, I knew she would have been hugely saddened had she known, believing that her life was only going downhill. I swore our family and neighbours to secrecy during their visits to my mother, who at 94 was increasingly suffering from dementia.

When placing most of her savings in a building society, I told the staff that under no circumstances were they to contact my mother. To my horror, the next time I visited her, two letters from them confirming her new accounts were open by her bedside.

Fortunately, I was able to smuggle them under my pullover and to my delight my mother had forgotten them. Had she not had dementia, she would have realised that I had sold her home to raise the money in the account.

I wrote to the building society and it apologised for the mistake. In 2014, it invited me to attend a seminar in London to discuss POA issues. About a dozen other men and women attended and I was shocked at the litany of errors they recounted. However, at least the building society was trying to rectify its poor staff training on this subject.
SB London

MY PARENTS became unable to manage their finances effectively, so I started to help them. After my mother died, my father and I took the simple step of putting all their bank and building society accounts into our joint names. This made it very easy for me to manage his financial affairs, and when he passed away all I had to do was to close the accounts.

Now that my wife and I are well into our 60s, we have given POA to our children but we, in our turn, may well come to need some help of a more practical kind.
DK Sheffield

Scale down estate tax

YOU’RE taxed on earnings and, if you can save, savings interest is also taxed (“The generation game: killing inheritance tax”, last week). So the same money has already been taxed several times before you drop off your perch, then the taxman wants another lump.

Originally, inheritance tax (IHT) was intended to soak the very wealthy, but rising house prices mean it can hit the children of anyone who owns an average semi and has put by a bit.

The tax won’t be scrapped, but it should be on a sliding scale, starting at the same rate as capital gains tax [18%]. The current 40% for all is grossly unfair on those who certainly aren’t “rich”.
RF Hull

A MARRIED couple can pass on £650,000, plus 60% of any residue, to their heirs. Thus children who were lucky enough to have parents with, say, a £1m estate would get £860,000. Is this really not enough?

Tax is due on income, capital gains, petrol, cars, alcohol, airline tickets, house purchases and everything that attracts VAT. Why should inheritances be exempt?

Do people who want to abolish IHT also want the NHS to pay their nursing home fees in later life? Do they complain about lack of investment in public services?

Inheritances are a huge freebie windfall, usually based on house-price inflation rather than personal effort. They increase the ever- widening gap between rich and poor and push house prices out of reach of those without inheritances.

By all means abolish IHT, but replace it by subjecting the inheritance to income tax in the hands of the recipient. Large estates would still produce a huge unearned windfall for children, with a smaller proportion going to the Treasury for the common good.
RC southwest London

Daughter’s £40,000 savings

I STARTED to pay £10 a month into my daughter’s child trust fund (CTF) when she was born in 2004 (“Families to ditch trust funds for Jisas”, last week).

I used the £250 voucher from the government to open a stakeholder equity CTF with Family Investments. When I went back to work part-time, I increased the monthly payment to £20, then to £50 when I went full-time. When I was promoted about three years ago, I increased the payment again, to £100 a month.

The CTF is now worth about £5,000. My daughter also has £3,575 in Premium Bonds. In addition, she has more than £30,000 in cash, which has been given to her for birthdays and Christmas as well as regular savings by both myself and my parents.

I plan to move her CTF into a junior Isa when the rules change next month and also to move some of her cash savings into the Isa to take it up to the annual limit [£4,080 for 2015-16].
NT Sunderland