Business news live: FTSE 100 to open near record high and latest bitcoin price after fall

Good morning and welcome to another week of live business coverage on The Independent.

We’ll be bringing you the latest company news, stock market updates and other investment asset price changes, news affecting your money and everything else across the finance landscape.

Rachel Reeves has been given her strongest warning yet that she will have to break a key party manifesto pledge by hiking taxes, introducing charges to use the NHS or dropping the triple lock guarantee on the state pension.

The beleaguered chancellor raised taxes by £40bn in her first Budget last year, partly to fund record new investment in the NHS.

But now the world’s most important financial watchdog has warned that she will likely have to break an election promise to raise “taxes on working people” – income tax, VAT or national insurance contributions by employees – to balance the books.

The FTSE 100 closed at 9,120 points last week, continuing its tremendous climb for the year even after dropping 0.2 per cent on Friday.

This week, the likes of AstraZeneca, Greggs, HSBC and the exchange’s actual owner, the London Stock Exchange Group, are all reporting financials.

Their performance – and the wider economic outlook – will shape whether the index continues to climb.

If you work for yourself, you’re likely to be familiar with that formidable phrase “payment on account”.

This is a payment you make to HMRC twice a year, by the end of January and the end of July, towards your next tax bill.

Although there are 4.4m self-employed people in the UK, about 12m people file a self-assessment tax return each year.

However, you’ll only need to make a payment on account if your self-assessment tax bill is more than £1,000 and less than 80 per cent of your tax was collected at source (such as PAYE).

More details here from James Hetherington: