Should council tax finally be abolished?

[writingoutloud]

Hi all, firstly sorry for the rant but I'm starting this thread because i came across this article in The Guardian (see below) about how a good number of local councils are going bankrupt, including Woking and Slough.

I mean, I'm just getting so sick of paying council tax myself especially since it's taxed AFTER my income tax, so essentially we are all DOUBLE TAXED.

I understand that bin waste removal, social care and fire department etc need to be paid (and so they should be) but this is not it. It has to change.

I'm just wondering what other people's thoughts are because in all honesty, this cost of living situation and seeing councils just do whatever they want with resident tax payers money seems to be getting out of hand, and who will probably get punished for it all and bail them all out... tax payers 🙄

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/28/at-least-26-english-councils-at-risk-of-bankruptcy-in-next-two-years

Having worked in public sectors for many years now, I can assure you that we all work very hard to provide the absolute best value possible.

Unless you're suggesting cuts to essential services (which is all we provide in our area - I can't think of one nom-essential service), then I'm not sure what you expect?

Personally I'm happy to pay council tax. It covers A LOT in my opinion and I don't begrudge it.

Government has forced local authorities into a desperate state. Ill-advised local authorities have tried to raise funds by dubious means. This government is asset-stripping the country and will leave massive debt for which Labour will be blamed when the bill comes in. Failing local authorities is just part of it.

I am also going to say that I believe the exemption for religious buildings should be abolished too and they should pay business rates.

Aren't most religious groups charities, though? I don't see how they could have rules for certain kinds of charities and not for others.

I am also going to say that I believe the exemption for religious buildings should be abolished too and they should pay business rates.

I’m in two minds about this. A lot of the religious buildings round here also host things like food banks for the wider community - I’d be happy for any religious or charitable organisation providing space for a genuine social need to be exempt, as it’s otherwise something the council would have to fund.

Buildings used solely for worship should probably not be exempt, but I don’t know how many are kept just for that purpose.

I just searched for "what does council tax pay for" and it happened to randomly come up for Cambridge.

A lot of it seems perfectly reasonable - with more than a quarter going in housing benefit, which I don't think many of us would quibble with as a vitally important part of their purpose.

However, they allocate (from a total of just over £100m):
10% on 'Central Services (including elections and local tax collection), strategy and partnerships';
10% on 'Planning Policy and Infrastructure (including car parks)';
10% on 'Reserves - money set aside to pay for services in future years';
2.5% on 'Corporate and Democratic Core';
1.6% on 'Capital expenditure financed from revenue';
1.5% on 'Commercial property';
0.3% on 'Financing prior year capital expenditure'.

Maybe I'm just very thick, but I don't find a lot of this very transparent at all - just non-specific jargon - and I rather think that some of it could easily be reclassified at a whim and explained away to mean pretty much anything they want it to mean. If your DH had taken thousands out of the joint account without telling you and then, when you asked what he'd spent it on, he said "Miscellaneous general expenses", would you be happy with that?!

£10m a year spent on (among other things) collecting tax(!) and elections? Do most people actually care or even know who runs their local councils, apart from which of a handful of would-be government parties it happens to ride on the coat-tails of to garner votes?

How many new car parks are they building and how many are being repaired every year so that it all costs a significant chunk of £10m OVER AND ABOVE all of the huge amount of money that they get in from parking charges?

£10m against future years' costs? Will they reduce it in future years, then, if they've already had it paid in, or is it basically 'jam tomorrow'?

Also, I'm probably being irrational, but am I the only one who hates the fact that the annual bill says 'Council Tax DEMAND'? Why not just 'bill', 'invoice' or 'requirement' or similar? It just sounds needlessly aggressive for the sake of it to me!

there’s an awful lot of financial mis management in LA, like the NHS.
I worked for one for 20 year. When I started we had about 15 staff and 1 manager an efficient and well run department. With funding we did increase in size temporarily. But when I left there were 6 staff, 3 of those were part time and 4 ‘managers’. We were badly run, lots of money wasted and our work output was dreadful especially as we had no staff, cut to the bone, not the managers though.

I’m not British but worked in the UK for a long time.
In my opinion council tax is a disgusting and punitive tax on the (working) poor.

It is the most egregious tax I think I have ever personally paid.

How would you replace the funding? Ours isn't cheap yet when I look on our councils website the council tax doesn't even cover the social care bill.

What would you drop from the list below and what would you add

Youth services - keep/increase
Libraries - get rid not relevant in the world of kindles etc
Parks, open spaces and galleries - keep
Leisure facilities, including swimming pools and recreation centres -keep but encourage to self fund by raising prices
Social care for older people, children and other vulnerable members of the community - limit funding for the elderly we can't afford it
Support for the voluntary sector - depends on the benefit
Planning and building control - erm why am I paying a fortune in planning fees if it doesn't cover the cost, add it to the bill we have got would rather pay it at a bigger rate on a one off than yearly.
Refuse collection, street cleaning and other environmental issues - you could make private refuse collection mandatory
Maintenance of roads and bridges - keep
Traffic management and road safety - hmmm ours seems to make it worse so they can go, most of their new traffic light roundabouts work better with the lights out never mind the 50mph air quality zones.
Parking services and control - gone if it costs more than it raises in revenue, would rather fight round a parked car or have to turn around than pay for them to try and stop it.
Elections, registrars of births, marriages and deaths - surely this can be centralised online for very little money.
Cemeteries, crematoria and mortuary services - end cemeteries and have cremation costs cover crematoriums.
Consumer protection - what even is that
Economic development and regeneration - increase funding
Community development services Housing, including the provision of social housing, housing strategy and advice and services for the homeless - hand to private landlords more HMOs to help homelessness
Housing Benefits and Council Tax administration - centralise online

I'd love to know why CT couldn't simply be incorporated in income tax - possibly only retained for people with second or subsequent properties.

I wonder what percentage of the money we pay in council tax goes straight towards the whole massive machine of assessing, administrating, levying, collecting, processing and pursuing council tax? All of which considerable expenses could be gone in a stroke if it were only included in the existing income tax system - meaning that the richest would pay most, the poorer would pay less, with the poorest having to pay nothing at all from their very limited pot.

Why could, why should this not happen?

Just add it to income tax?

I had people reporting to me that were living in band A housing, and their council tax bill was 10 or 12% of their tax home pay. I was living in a Band D houses at the time and my council tax was 3% of my tax home pay.

The problem is not that money needs to be collected to pay for services- it’s that poor people are forced to pay more so that wealthy people can pay less.

But most of what children use, schools and NHS, comes from government via national taxes.

The minimal basics, parks, library is from council.

Because only 35% of the population pays income tax.

Honestly if the government tried to add everyone else's council tax on to our income tax bill we would just pay gross into a private pension until our net was simple we would pay nothing. But our private pension would be growing and growing so we could retire earlier and richer and still pay no council tax. But we could pay privately for the services we personally needed should those needs arise.

Increasing equality.

One reason why
Wealthier people would get around it.

We would.

It's difficult to separate out the services people 'use' and those that need to be maintained for the benefit of all. Take for example tree maintenance, we all like to see tree lined streets but councils have a statutory duty to maintain those trees so they don't become diseased and fall causing injury or damage. More trees in a Borough, more maintenance costs.

@RexWillKillYou but your 3% of take home is likely to be a larger amount as a contribution to the bill and also you are less likely to use the services.

Ok another point, we are not single right now so if one of us had an operation that recovery at home needed a bit of physical help for a bit, think routine not life threatening, we would sort it out. A truly single household, no family or friend help, would need a couple, 6 weeks, or whatever care. Who should pay for that?

You can be expensive as a single person.
Leaving emotion out of this the council don't care if your lifelong desire was to be married, if you're not, you're not.

So let it be bespoke. But when/if something is required, personal care, then you pay in full yourself. Yes? It can be viewed as an insurance policy. Everyone pays some each year so no one has to sell a kidney should they need assistance.

And replaced with what?

Oh, I don’t know then higher VAT rates on more expensive products.
as an example the duties that are high on cheap shoes could be matched or surpassed for expensive shoes.
Or business class seats,
or opera tickets
or whatever it is that you do with your money.

My kids were recently learning the causes of the French Revolution and the wealthy gouged off the poor.!

£10 million for Planning and Car parks is quite cheap really. They’ll probably cover a planning barrister out of that, if they have to defend a decision with the Planning Inspectorate (can’t remember the exact form, but if someone appeals a planning decision, the council have to decide whether to roll over or fight it). Planning officer staff is probably a good couple of hundred thousand a year. You then have to administer the planning system - portals, notifying neighbours, coordinating with highways agency etc. A large infrastructure build planning application is HUGE.

Cambridge alone has 4 (maybe 5, can’t remember of the top of my head) massive park and ride car parks, which are free to park at, as well as loads of car parks and on street parking. Revenue will help offset the costs of maintenance but I don’t think it would cover it entirely.

Our local government (can you tell I live in the greater Cambs area) is quite good - lots of debate over a congestion charge and a move to active travel vs the “prise my car out of my dead hands” and against any development brigade. I’d rather the local council had more money than it disappeared off to Whitehall.

Our council are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Why?

Because they decided to invest millions of tax payers money into various schemes thinking it was a smart move.

Except it wasn't and these investments have gone badly wrong.

I paid 300-400 more a year than them. I was using less services at the time (no kids, working FT). I was better able to be a contributor than a taker, and so I should contribute.

But if we are going to charge people on their consumption anyway why have any taxes at all? It isn’t as if it’s easy for most British families to be geographically mobile anyway so they can’t choose to live in a low tax place.

I just thought (and think) that council tax is a punitive tax on the poor. A band A property in Grimsby is almost 1500 pound a year. That’s a lot if you are on 20 K a year, and plenty of people are.

Actually no we spend it all on travel
And put loads in a pension
We drive old cars
And get bonus dividends in dollars so easy to hide that
Yeah tax high end goods again we could bypass that.

See what we can't bypass is "you live here pay this bill" charge.

As I said before we are net contributors, we really don't mind. We like contributing to our local society for what we do use and what others less fortunate need. But it helps that everyone pays a bit. Try to take all these costs from us then we will happily, legally, hide, invest, to pay minimum possible because that's just taking the piss. L

We are not loaded loaded but can play the legal tax game and do, as I said once you get to the level of putting max in a pension and you still can't avoid losing your tax free initial £13k it ceases to become a problem.

Plus if you tax high end goods high net worth tourists will go to Dubai to buy and an economy grows by money coming into a country not the same chocolate biscuit going around and around.

So yeah privatise the lot. If that makes you feel better. Probably cost the people who can't afford it most more, but hey let them eat cake eh!

Not true -some councils did, but by no means all or even most.

For those of you complaining that you don’t use local services - do you also resent paying income tax because you have no use for the armed forces? Or maybe even the NHS if you’re fit and healthy?

Actually we do buy a lot of tickets, not opera mind, but yes let's tax them so only the wealthiest can access live art, that's progress don't you think? And fair? And would mean that the less well off wouldn't even think the live arts is a place they could be, so the future live art will be produced just by the wealthy offspring and that would make it fun and diverse don't you think?

Well our council certainly has....

Honestly if the government tried to add everyone else's council tax on to our income tax bill we would just pay gross into a private pension until our net was simple we would pay nothing. But our private pension would be growing and growing so we could retire earlier and richer and still pay no council tax. But we could pay privately for the services we personally needed should those needs arise.

Maybe it would need a radical overhaul to increase trust amongst the wealthy that their taxes are well spent and their place in society is fair - you have more, you give more. Scandinavian countries seem to manage OK with much higher tax rates that cover far more - and are frequently presented as among the most content societies.

Also, as I said, a very large amount of council tax must surely be spent on administering and collecting council tax, so that could just disappear.

However, if you did stash it all away into growing your private pension to a huge pot, would you not just be taxed hugely then, when you eventually take it, on your very high income?

Actually we do buy a lot of tickets, not opera mind, but yes let's tax them so only the wealthiest can access live art, that's progress don't you think? And fair? And would mean that the less well off wouldn't even think the live arts is a place they could be, so the future live art will be produced just by the wealthy offspring and that would make it fun and diverse don't you think?

The problem is that, although in an ideal world, live art should be accessible by people at all financial levels of society, to those who are permanently unable to sleep with worry at whether they can feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads, live art will come very very low indeed down their priority list.