Council Tax bands

@whatkatydid2014 I agree. I see my young adult DC being totally screwed for the cost of housing in the SE. Leaving very little disposable income. And now because they had to pay so much to buy a place, OP now wants them to pay a higher rate of council tax too. They have housing that barely meets their needs so there’s nothing to downsize to. They have jobs that require them to be present so moving elsewhere would not be practical, plus this is their home where their family is , so loss of family support and so on would make that difficult.

The Community Charge/Poll Tax was fair, to an extent. I supported it when it was introduced. For homes over a certain value, a property tax could be added. Why should six working adults sharing a house pay the same as the couple next door on an income marginally above benefits level?

This is a very reasonable point. I’m in the NE and here two average incomes will still allow you to buy a decent house. On two incomes a little above U.K. average (7 years back) we comfortably purchased a 5 bed/2bath old Victorian terrace with huge living rooms downstairs & a garden that’s a stone’s throw from the coast and local transport. In much of London for the same kind of money we could get a 2/3 bed, ex council flat in a block with tiny rooms and have an annual service charge to add to our costs. It doesn’t seem all that fair to ask that the person in London in the flat with higher prices for everything pays the same as us just because house prices there are so high there. Chances are they don’t have the choice to just downsize. We could fairly easily shift to a smaller house but if you are a family of 4 it’s not so easy to downsize from a small 2/3 bed flat.

Not necessary. A family with two children costs way more than four adults.

I really disagree with this. The standard of living in some areas of the country, for example some areas of the north is significantly higher than in the south due to the high house prices down here. There is no way the south should be charged more to subsidise areas of the country that already have far more disposable income.

I’m not convinced that families use significantly more services at all. I was told that we couldn’t get a bigger bin unless we had 6 kids 😆 Nearly 60% of council spending is social care and most of that is for pensioners who live alone.

I think fundamentally the country needs to decide whether council tax is a local tax for use of local services or whether it becomes more of a national wealth tax that is used for redistribution to poorer areas and to prop up other bits of government spending like health and education.

Most developed countries (actually all OECD except the UK) have a proportional property tax. Sometimes this stays locally and sometimes it doesn’t. Where it stays locally you tend to get major discrepancies in the services provided. For example in a fancy bit of Connecticut my kids were in classes of around 15-20 kids but in poor bits of Texas kids were in classes of 40+, all funded by local property taxes.. our library had free programming with snacks for kids, specialist teachers, specialist equipment (3d printers, cricut, electronics kits etc) theirs were being closed down.

The government have said they want to raise taxes and property is one of the ways they could do it. It’s an area of unearned wealth that people have paid no tax on. The tax share paid by the highest earners are at their highest levels seen - there is a limit. DCs work recently opened an office in Abu Dhabi and anyone who wanted to could move there. Those jobs have now left the UK and we lost those taxes too (about 1/3 of his team). Many of them are HENRYs who don’t own property and probably never will in London, most childless or 1 kid.

Because those who have the highest capacity to pay should pay more. That's a basic principle that I firmly believe in. Right wing politics tries to avoid this because flate-rate options benefit the wealthiest at the expense of the poorest.

This graph shows a total public revenue burden in the UK of 1.14 trillion per year. If that was imposed per head them each of us (including children) would pay a flat £17,000 per year. Or if just divided between those of working age it would be £27,000 per head. Per head taxes are clearly ridiculous and it's sensible to have a variety of taxes which take a slice here and a slice there in a way that takes much more where there's a lot of spare money sloshing about and much less where people are living on the breadline and only using the basic necessities. Two adults in a 5 bedroom home are clealy more affluent than average and could easily downsize to a smaller home if they choose so they clearly have more capacity to pay and shoukd do so.

This. Every time this conversation comes up Mumsnet circles back to reinventing Poll Tax and universally agrees it's the best way to go.

But why should that couple pay more than the family? Maybe they chose not to have another child so that they could afford a bigger home. That doesn't mean they deserve to pay more council tax. They will effectively be punished for saving the money that extra children cost.

No the poll tax was a flat rate per adult head, no difference between what Rishi Sunak would pay vs what someone who earns only just too much the threshold for getting benefits.

My suggestion is a way of identifying and extracting contributions from those whose lifestyle is the most luxurious because ability to pay is a good fundamental principle for fair tax distribution and it's too easy for clever accountancy to hide high income but it's difficult to hide a house.with my suggestion the couple of adults who are in a 5 bed home despite having no children because they like having a study each and a guest room will pay more than the couple who have s 5 bed home because they have 6 kids between them in some combination of kids from previous relationships plus younger children that they made together.

I think I'd like to adjust the original suggestion I made that you quoted though because it occus to me that a dwelling made in a converted cargo container in a car park in Wigan could well be the same square footage as a bijoux little flat in a Georgian building in Kensington or Chelsea but the person living in the latter definitely has more capacity to contribute to the shared costs of living in a civilised society than the person living in the former.

And there should definitely be redistribution from wealthy areas to poorer areas.

But that’s because people need to drink more because they live in Barnsley

My flat is bigger than the flat upstairs but I don't have children here, I don't use education, social care, public transport, quite a lot of council services and I feel quite aggrieved that I'd have to pay more than the family upstairs purely because of size.

Isn't that what the poll tax was more or less?

I didn’t agree with Thatcher about much, but the Poll Tax was actually the fairest and most logical solution.

The purpose isn't to increase the overall take, just make it fairer.

What's fairer though? It's for services. It doesn't seem 'fair' for a couple without children using very few of these services to pay more than a couple with 5 children who use lots of the services just because their house is worth more really.

I

Several people are favouring more bands above band H (band I in Wales) so that people in "mansions" or "palaces" pay more. The data also shows there is a need for a band below band A, especially for areas in the North. In several areas, over 60% of properties are band A - this should really be split into two or more bands.

Comparisons are often made of the band D tax in different areas, and these often show northern areas are expensive and London & SE areas are cheap. This is a false comparison. Band D in Sheffield is £2268.65 this year, and in Richmond on Thames it is very similar at £2263.66. However, if you compare a typical property (the median) then in Sheffield it is band A paying £1512.43 and in Richmond it is band E paying £2766.70 (83% more).

If anybody wants the data on the number of properties in each band for every council area in England & Wales then the link is
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/council-tax-stock-of-properties-2024

Go to "Table CTSOP 1.0_SUP: number of properties by Council Tax band and administrative area at 15 September 2024" to download the data as an Excel spreadsheet (third tab has the data)

But four people would likely have a significantly higher cost to the council than two so why should the two pay more?

So because dh and I chose to have only one child we would pay more? Why? It just make no sense to make council tax at all linked to house value or size.

Each person pays what they can afford.

The vast majority of people live in houses they can afford. I'd be a big fan of moving to a property tax instead of council tax. Much better than any increases on vat, income tax, national insurance etc. It'd be a wealth tax on wealth that nobody can hide or move off shore.

But they don’t. The time I got the best value ever was when I was a single parent in the era of poll tax. I was paying for one person and my child was being educated. The childless couple next door were paying double and getting way less in the way of services than I was. It was grossly unfair.

I don't understand why the councils don't revalue properties as soon as building control sign of after extensions. Why wait until the property is sold.
In my road 4 houses (4 beds) are band F, all others were 3 beds so band E. However many of the 3 beds have been extended to 4 or 5 beds and are all still band E, apart from one. Many now have a much higher sq ft than the 4 beds which are still the original size. It makes no sense.

The fairest way would be a local income tax, include ALL income, not just PAYE. Each person pays what they can afford.

I think the point they were making is that people should be incentivised to use that extra space. Housing is in short supply and people should be encouraged to have appropriate sized accommodation.

My (retired) in-laws live alone and have a 7 bedroom house - it is a bit silly… but stamp duty, a lack of suitable options and general moving costs put them off downsizing. It’s nice having a big house at Christmas but mostly it’s just a burden of upkeep and heating bills.

All of this is rearranging deck chairs really. What we actually need is more homes where there are shortages but the government reduced the building target for London and increased it for the Lake District so we probably shouldn’t all hold our breath on that one…

@titbumwillypoo Your post sounds like a Labour leaflet.

Call it a poll tax or any other name but it is the only fair way.