...to continue trying to fight the system and not pay council tax?

[WineGoggles]

Probably (because I could pay the tax from my savings), but I have a bee in my bonnet over this and I don't want to take it lying down. My situation is this (sorry it's long):

My Mum died last year and left me her small bungalow. I'm desperately trying to sell my cottage so I can go and live in it but this is proving difficult. I looked into letting the bungalow but it needs quite a bit of work first and I'd also have to let it for at least 6 months. Fair enough, but if I sell the cottage I then need to find somewhere for me and my dog until the tenant moves out. Letting the cottage just creates a different set of problems and anxieties and is not an option.

Another issue is that the bungalow is a 6 hour round trip away so it's not straightforward to nip there and do renovations. I don't know anyone who can help me or anyone down there who can let tradesmen in on my behalf. It's all down to me to sort out.

So it looks like the option is to stay put, try and sell the cottage while the bungalow remains unoccupied, and I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I wrote to the council back in May to explain the awkward situation I'm in and asked for their advice. I heard nothing so after a couple of weeks and a payment reminder later, I chased them up. The answer was that the relevant department had received my letter and were dealing with it, that they would get back to me in due course. To cut a long story short the council have been terrible; they never mentioned my letter only what the rules are. I tried to reason with them but things escalated and I got a court summons, so at that point I contacted my local MP for help. He said he'd contact the chief executive of the council and get back to me. This was over a month ago and I've not had an answer even though I've chased it up twice now. In the meantime the system hasn't stopped and I've now received a "notice of liability order" from the council. I called the council and they simply didn't give a shit until I mentioned I'd got my MP involved and then they got a little helpful saying I could defer payment until the sale of my cottage provided my solicitor wrote to them. (I'm now waiting for the solicitors to call me back tomorrow as they were in meetings today...tsk!).

I am now in the position where I have owed 90% council tax on the bungalow since April/May 2012. If I lived there I would get a single person discount and only have to pay 75%. Obviously I have no idea how long it would take my cottage to sell - it could be next week, it could be another 2 years - which makes it harder to arrange or plan anything.

I know IBU because I could put up and shut up and simply pay up, but I don't think it's right. The bee in my bonnet is three-fold;

1. The council do not treat people and their circumstances as individual cases and do not use any discretion. They have a"these are the rules so tough" mentality until you bring in the bigger guns.

1. I appreciate councils do not want properties empty but I also don't think they should charge so much council tax when it's a situation like mine. It's not as though I'm using any of their facilities or I'm a career landlord. Although I consider myself very lucky to have inherited a home I didn't want my beloved mother to die prematurely...[resists urge to waffle on and it turn into a "it's not fair" tantrum].

1. When we take into account that many multi million/billion pound companies - such as Vodaphone, Starbucks, Boots, Tesco - are getting out of paying their share of tax to the UK, it seems even more unfair that they make sure us plebs don't get away with avoiding a penny. I can really see where the suffragettes were coming from.

OP I really think you need to insure it. If it burns down you will be left with nothing.

rat Thanks, but probate was granted over 6 months ago. The 6 month exemption is from when probate is granted, not from the death of the owner. So in practice people get a bit more than 6 months to sort things out.

YABU

Annoying as it is, you have to pay the CT.

I fin income tax annoying but hey ho.

YABU

I have never paid council tax and never will though I do pay rates which covers the usual council services but includes water, I was accessed about 5 years ago and had a 100% increase in my rates which I disputed, the council sent out one of their little wannabees and after showing him a broken sewer pipe on my neighbors wall and a couple of dead rats that my cat had killed the rates dropped back to their original level of £300 quid a year. Fight them all the way.

^ the councils up here chased down everyone they could, garnishing wages , involving debt collection agencies and so on
Its a law, they have the power to enforce it, whether you agree or not.

While I do think the OP is unreasonable, I would have to dispute that the poll tax was collected from everyone deemed liable to pay it. I know people who worked in local govt at the time and they let a lot of cases go just because there were so many of them. Also, the non-payment campaign (and subsequent riots) were so successful that they pretty much brought down a govt. I myself never paid it. A bill arrived for me at my parents' house and my mum rang the council and said "She's not here any more; she lives in ..." and the person on the other end of the phone interrupted her and said "You don't need to tell me where she is. If you tell me where she is I can send her a bill. If you don't, I can't. Just tell me that she's no longer at that address". And if that conversation happened once, you can bet it happened thousands of times over.

However ... if you own two properties, of course you have to pay council tax on them both.

I own 2 properties,One has no council services at all including water, the council did try to bill me for services that they did not provide but could provide, they were told to take a run a jump which they did.

I am very sorry for your loss OP.

But YABU....

By all means don't pay BUT

If the house gets vandalised - don't call the Police, you haven't paid for them.

If the house gets broken in to - don't call the Police, you haven't paid for them.

If the house catches fire - don't expect the Fire Brigade to come and put it out, instead it will just have to burn totally to the ground, Mum's furniture and all - because YOU HAVEN'T PAID FOR THEM.

These are all things I would never wish on anyone, but the point is, if God forbid they did happen you would want the above services to come. You would want the Fire Brigade to put a fire out whilst you still had a house. Of course you would, who wouldn't?

But CT pays for the Police and Fire Service amongst other things - so if you don't pay why should you get to use them?

Pay the bill.

(And FGS get some insurance!!!)

What Welshmaenad said!

'council tax is a tax on owning property' err no it isnt

Coola, do you actually for one minute think the police catch criminals who rob or vandalise a house? what country do you live in and why should the Op pay for a useless non existant service?

I work in the council department that deals with MP enquiries and complaints. And if slightly ott letters come then we do have bit of a sniggering (fondly recalls man who compared difficulty parking and then getting to Afghanistan).

If you wish to complain about the council on the grounds of them not informing you and thus administering then go ahead. However it is not the local authorities duty to check up on whether a property is for sale or going through probate etc. If you can post on mumsnet then you can access the information on the LAs website about council tax exemptions etc. Which apply to all otherwise the council would be guilty of maladministration and the ombudsman who be very cross!

Yabu - what makes you so special?

oh dear OP, I think AIBU was a bad place for your thread! I am sorry for your loss and understand why you would LIKE the council to be able to take individual circumstances into account - in an ideal world they could and would but realistically, they have to have blanket rules and the likelihood is that even if one dept sent you a letter saying you didn't have to pay, another would tell you you were being prosecuted for non payment. Seems to me you can either wait until it goes to court and try and get the judge to see things your way (which is a big risk), or make sure you are doing everything you can to reduce your liability in the short term by unfurnishing it etc and pay. I do also sympathise with trying to sell your house - we tried for over a year, with a realistic price but the market is VERY tough. Is letting it really not an option - just seems that might be a short term solution at the least - get a good agent and it won't matter if you are far away.

Just pay the tax or sell the property, or rent out yours and live in the other whilst it is renovated. Stop being ridiculous. I have more reason to be pissed than you - a tiny corner of my house could theoretically be lived in as an annexe. It isn't, there are only two of us in the house, but as it could be I am charged 2 council taxes for one house. So, having a small kitchenette area costs me well over £1000pa. If I removed the kitchenette I would still be charged this as 'it could be re-instated'. I don't like it, but I pay it.

People always assume CT is a sort of tax like rental for time spent in a property. Imagine villages in Cornwall - Port Isaac lets say.... Go to the harbour area and 50%???? Are holiday properties.

Unoccupied apart from summer

So should they pay reduced CT? The council still maintains light, roads, police, fire service etc for the whole year. They cannot give a % service matching the % council tax the holiday home owners feel matches their usage of the property.

It feels unfair but you are paying for services provided all yr round even if you choose/don't use them

I am sorry your mother died, grief slows you down and makes everything then times harder.

But please, please make sure the building has insurance, and if you are planng on keeping anything inside the bungalow get contents insurance too.

You say you have savings, this is some thing you need to use them for.

Bureni if the Police didn't catch and successfully prosecute burglars and vandals then my days would be very quiet indeed as they make up a significant proportion of my caseload.

Oh and I live in the real world - - unlike you by the sounds of it.-- If you called 999 they would come - they TaDaaaa! The council services you claim not to have.

YABU

Yabu.
You really need to insure the house. As others have said,you may (let's hope not) need the service of the emergency services. Pay up,the comments about the suffragettes are insensitive,they didn't fight for avoiding council tax.

pay your council tax you will get fined and the debt will follow you forever you are not making a stand for the greater good you just dont want to pay it Pay it

when i was really skint I couldnt afford my council tax so i was sporadic paying we nearly ended up in court because of it, rent out your cottage move into the bungalow , the sufforogettes comment

Are you aware that now the council have taken you to court and have a liability order, if you dont pay they will send bailiffs round?

I'm not going to debate the rights and wrongs of your situation, I'm just making you aware that if a bailiff comes round, the amount you owe will go up and up.

what Tantrums said I didnt get the baliffs as i am in scotland it is dealt with differently, and also OP this will follow you for a long time if you want to get credit for anything just pay it make an arrangemenht with that council get a payment plan

The councils make a point of telling people to get in touch if they are having problems which is what I did. I explained that whatever I chose to do was going to cause issues in one way or another and without advice from people in the know I just didn't know what to do for the best. I know from reading MN that other people deal with far worse and awkward situs than mine, but I didn't have MN back then

£230 a month is a lot to pay without challenging it, which is what I tried to do, and I got angry when 1. I felt that 90% tax was a hell of a lot considering it's an accidental "2nd home", and 2. the council didn't bother replying to me at all (so bollocks to the whole "get in touch if you need help" suggestion). I got bloody minded and thought why the f* should I pay until you acknowledge my letter. Stupid I know because what do they care.

"You say you have savings, this is some thing you need to use them for"
You're right and I've gone online and paid it. It's just I've saved all my life, been careful, never had benefits etc, and I'm losing money right left and centre (like many people) and this is just gutting. It's the high amount I find difficult to swallow as much as anything else.

"I do also sympathise with trying to sell your house - we tried for over a year, with a realistic price but the market is VERY tough. Is letting it really not an option"
Although I could let the cottage that would mean taking it off the market for 6 months then trying to sell it possibly with a sitting tenant. I keep hearing horror stories that it makes it far more difficult to sell that way. Plus, and sorry for drip feeding, but I have to sell the cottage because I'm caught in an exBF/joint mortgage situ (his name is on the mortgage but I own 99% of the property after buying him out) and he got threatening (badly enough for it to freak me and for me to let the Police know in case anything happened to me!) because it wasn't selling quick enough. He would go ballistic if it came off the market and I'd have more to worry about.

I do not think I'm special, just someone who has become rather overwhelmed with life crap over the last few years and tried to make my annoyance at the system known. Although I seem sorted on the outside, on the inside I'm a mass of anxiety and feel very alone. When I moved with my exBF I left the few friends I have a long way away and living in the sticks have become quite isolated here. So I may be "lucky to have inherited a house" but I don't feel that great about it.

I'd love to let the bungalow if there was some way of the tenancy being on a month by month basis (but who would want that?) and the tenants didn't care that it needed an overhaul, but it seems the options are always 6 months contracts then rolling monthly. And agents advise making the place nice or people have no respect for it. The thought of selling the cottage then finding myself homeless is one stress too far for me I'm afraid. And I know other people cope but I'm not doing so well.

MrsJay et al; the suffragettes comments was supposed to be tongue in cheek after a friend told me I'd be chaining myself to railings next, but I appreciate that that others wouldn't have realised that. I've read about the work they did and mine is not on that level at all. As I said, if MN had an edit facility I would've changed it.

YABU....but.......

So sorry about the loss of your mum.

When my mum died I went a bit mad with grief and took everything personally and literally thought that the world was about me because my mum had died. It wasn't though and it carried on as usual.

it's annoying OP but yes, you do have to pay it, you do not have a valid reason not to. There are millions of people in your sad situation.