Council tax very unfair to single people

Quite

I get the singles persons discount and I could have five kids under 18 at home.
They could take it in a case by case basis, how many people, what size property, hey they could weigh your waste and get you to give them your car mileage! They could ask if you use the extra services like meals on wheels that are paid for by council tax and charge extra! Charge more if your house is more of a fire risk. But no they really can't, so they do what they can.
You get a discount. You could use more of the services than three people. Who knows.

So instead of thinking great 25% off that's nice you're complaining it isn't more off?

If your house catches fire you still get 100% of the fire service anyone else does

Council tax is exactly that.
When we paid domestic rates, they were based purely on the value of the house.
Community Charge, or Poll tax was based on adult head count

Council tax is a hybrid. 50% is based on value of property, 50% is based on 2 adults living in the house; so single people pay half of that 50%.

People either have short memories or are tok young to remember the poll tax when Thatcher tried to charge per person I'm the household which went down like a bucket of cold sick to the point there were riots.

The reality is the same service is offered to all households so the fact they decide to charge by house value is probably fairer than by person or by property especially wheen a discount is offered to singles.

@Caravaggiouch ". It’s not deemed prudent to use one-off capital receipts to fund recurring expenditure because what do you plan to do when you’ve used the one-off resources?"
this is an 8 figure one off. So it could be used on long term repairs and still reduce our bills even by £20 a month this year.

but they prefer more capex projects. We have a new leisure centre within less than a mile of another leisure centre...mostly empty. I walk past it every day. But the council gave their mates loads of money to build it so they are very proud.

but I'm sure you know, everything within councils is designed to be as costly as possible, right down to stationery procurement.

the right people make a lot of money out of white elephants.

There’s basically no link between amount paid and services received for CT because so much of it goes on very small populations of people (children’s social care for e.g. which thankfully most people never need to use). The amount spent on stuff we all use like bin collections and road maintenance is minuscule. And there’s no link between how deprived an area is and the amount you pay - e.g. average band D in London much less than in north east of England.

So virtually any system will feel wildly unfair to many people.

The provision of services isn't lessened by 50% because you live alone. Your bins are still emptied, the streets are lit, the roads are maintained, the police will attend a crime, the streets are still cleaned etc just the same amount as if you had 27 people in your house.

Would you feel better with a poll tax, whereby each adult has to pay? It makes no odds to me personally.

The poll tax was absolutely not fair. It was not designed to be fair. It was designed to enable those living in very large high value homes to pay less. It was massively regressive.

If you believe in being responsible for yourself and don't like the CTax situation - get a lodger

Id prefer to pay more tax to get more services. What we currently have is an ever increasing cost of living which is going on servicing wage bills and little else.

It's random alright. My 1 bed (52 sq m) is Band E at £196pm, and that's fairly reasonable for London. My last flat was also Band E (39 sq m) and £140pm last year.

My friend back in my home town lives in a 2 bed terrace and that's Band A, but Band E there would be more than I'm paying in Central London. Basing it on property value as decided by location makes no sense to me either.

Did you mean 4x? Either way, where is the evidence for this?
What if an occupant is a smoker? Or uses hair straighteners or worse still, a smoker that uses hair straighteners?
A single parent is likely to use more services than a couple without children but that latter will be charged the full council tax.
It is difficult to factor in all the variables and just being a sole occupant doesn’t automatically equate to 50% less demand on council run services.

You have the choice to move into a houseshare and only pay 25% (or potentially less).

The per person tax didn't work, a policy based only on the property was felt to be unfair so we have this hybrid system.

Really it's about noone wanting to pay much, noone wanting to work much. Everyone wanting all the services, but screw everyone else.

I think a 25% discount is fair. Council tax covers some things that don't change no matter how many people are in a property - street lighting, pavement and road maintenance and cleaning, bin collection to name a few. The discount recognises that a one adult household will typically use less of some services.
Council tax pays for a lot of things that are for the good of everyone too, such as schools, should those of us without children request a child free discount to remove the percentage that goes towards schools? And ask parents (some of whom will be single parents) to make up the difference? No that would be ridiculous.

You’re the one who started making factual statements like “3 adults so 3 times the risk” with apparently zero evidence to back it up🙂

There was no student exemption. Every student in a tiny box room crammed into a corridor of each hall of residence at my university was expected to pay the same as the gentry landowners. Of course there were riots.

You'll be asking him for housekeeping I hope

The Charge proved extremely unpopular; while students and the registered unemployed had to pay 20%, some large families occupying relatively small houses saw their charges go up considerably, and the tax was thus accused of saving the rich money and moving the expenses onto the poor.[4]

Surely if every adult we're employed it is only right they pay?

Prior to council tax was poll tax and prior to poll tax were rates. None of these systems seems to have been without it's failings and all seem to be a disservice to someone.

A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources.[1] Poll is an archaic term for "head" or "top of the head". The sense of "counting heads" is found in phrases like polling place and opinion poll.[2]

This seems to be it's failing and where the exemption process of the current system could be mixed in with a per capita tax.

Council Tax is based on what a property was worth in 1991.....egh ! When is a political party going to have the balls to say, what nonsense that is, and propose a re-evaulation of every property in the country (as has happened in Wales), Or, propose a new system of local taxation.

Ours is 360/month and just 1 person working in our property, but 4 people.

It set neighbour against neighbour