I HATE paying Council Tax. It's the bill I hate the most.

[flashbac]

Council Tax is regressive and unfair.

It takes more money from lower income individuals.

It has no link to the actual value of a property.

In addition to linking council tax to value, the bands also need to increase in range in order to reflect the vast difference in property values.

How can it be right that a million pound property in Westminster is the same or (often lower) CT rate than a 2 up, 2 down house in Yorkshire?

I think council tax will be updated but your argument that it has no link to property values is nonsense. It is linked to the value of your property in your council area compared with other properties in your council area. This means that people with big houses in Yorkshire will pay more than those with small houses.
What would be the point in comparing the price of a house in Yorkshire with house prices in Westminster? Nobody would end up paying any council tax in Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Council wouldn't have any money. In contrast Westminster council would have loads. Or do you expect people in Westminster give money to the Yorkshire Council even though they don't actually live there?

@LaurieFairyCake

Yes we have really low council tax in some London Boroughs - I'm in Greenwich and it's £130 a month I think

I'm also in Greenwich, £167.08 per month for me, band E (I just checked). I think Greenwich is pretty good, no complaints.

I am on the border of Bromley (literally a few paces away), and council tax is quite a bit cheaper there but the services are not so good as Greenwich borough.

If someone is on their own they can claim single person's reduction.

This link gives you a comparison between the various charges: www.quittance.co.uk/conveyancing/advice/buying-a-property/council-tax-bands-table-of-all-uk-regions-202122
Incredible!

The reason those regional discrepancies exist is because the councils in each area are required to fund services, that is divided by the houses across the bands in the area.

Yes that point seems to be completely lost on OP and many others on this thread. What do they think council tax actually is?

A leaflet came out in our council area recently saying due to ineptitude, the council is cutting everything except the grass. That made me chuckle

@ThumbWitchesAbroad

When the council tax was introduced, the Tory run councils mostly had much cheaper council tax bills than Labour or Lib Dem run councils. Wonder why...

Why? It's because Council Tax only represents about a quarter of local authorities' revenues. The rest (i.e. the vast majority) is doled out from central government.

This has several implications. First, even in the Gordon Brown years of opulent public spending the sort of thing that would happen is that central government would impose additional costs on local authorities in areas like social care, education, safeguarding and various other regulations, but not provide any additional central funding. This meant that council tax would have to rise four times higher than it should have done had central government paid its fair share, and for central government to claim it didn't raise taxes.

Second, it means that the dishing out of central government funding is politicised rather than done to any kind of fair formula. Central government funding to local authorities is where most of the austerity of the Cameron years actually hit. You'll be astonished to learn that it hit hardest in Labour-run councils (mine, which even by Labour standards is way out left of Looney Left, lost over 30% in a decade). This means that Council Tax skyrockets up without really making a dent in the shortfall, services are cut left right and centre, and Cameron/Osborne/Boris/Rishi can blame profligate Councils for it.

The whole stinking mess (by which I mean local government full stop, not just its finances) needs burning down and rebuilding from the bedrock up.

In Portugal, municipal taxes are based on the value of a property recorded in the land registry at the last change of ownership, adjusted for inflation. There are then a series of adjustments applied to take into account the property's particular characteristics - if you are more than a certain distance from a bus stop for example then your bill is adjusted down as you are deemed unable to benefit from the (council-subsidised) bus service. It seems much fairer to me.

For anyone tempted to under-declare the value of a property when it is purchased to reduce their annual council tax, capital gains tax is levied on all residential property gains unless you roll it into another residential property, so you get stung harder there when you try to realise your capital gain.

Given that a huge bulk of it is going to pay for fat pensions for retired council workers YANBU.
We have a friend whose father had a good job with fantastic salary and an excellent pension working for the council. He retired early and immediately contracted doing the exact same job at the council as before.
He claimed his pension and is paid even more by the council as a contractor.
He has bought several holiday apartments in Spain cash as a result.
It's paid for by our council tax, you know the one we pay for police and fire and bins etc that are all chronically underfunded..

@TheRebelle

YANBU - the whole tax system needs overhauling to make it fairer.

Define fairer.

For many on here "fairer" seems to mean that they pay less, whilst "someone else" pays a lot more. Or they come out with phrases such as "it should be more progressive" when we already have one of the most progressive tax systems in Europe.

I think we should all pay more tax, something along the lines of the levels in Norway, but too many people seem to think that they should pay US levels of tax, whilst getting Scandinavian levels of services, those two goals are incompatible.

@Caffeinefirst

Mine is nearly £4K pa in Cheshire. I imagine it will be over £4K in the next year or so. I live in a nice house on a fairly new build estate (less than 15 years old) but it’s worth a lot less than a friend’s 2 bed flat in a nice area of North London and her council tax is about half mine.

We can afford it now but once we are retired it’s going to be a big chunk of retirement income.

I do think the bandings in my area need re-doing. I think if they were done on house values today we would probably be in a band lower.

Your friend isn't paying for amenities in Cheshire though is she so why would the cost of her council tax have anything to do with yours?

@Spidey66

I hate the water rates. I mean I pay it and everything but I resent paying for something that falls from the sky.

I live in a flat. If it wasn't the fact the freeholders have not requested the ground rent for the past 20 years, I'd resent paying that. It's such an archaic system. As it is I'm resenting the thought it's going to cost me mega £££ to sort the lease out if I ever want to sell my flat.

Yeah right ...

I resent paying for something that falls from the sky

@emmathedilemma - interesting, didn't realise it was that much. £3k still very high though!!

I also have trouble with the idea that some people "use" fewer council services than others and therefore should pay less. I don't "use" the national nuclear deterrent, but I certainly benefit from having it there.

Similarly, I might not use local secondary schools but I will benefit from having a future workforce that can read, write, and count well enough to go on to become doctors, police officers, pilots and so on.

I bloody hate it too

I used to pay £70 a month on a London house (2 bed) after single person discount.

Now in Yorkshire, £120 a month very similar property. And yes, that's also after the single person discount.

@SmokeyDevil No chance it'll go up next year - we've got council elections in May, no council administration is going to put up everyone's bill a month before they go out to vote. (For those not in Scotland, we vote for all our councillors at once rather than spreading it out, so election year has much more of an impact.)

The vast majority of what councils spend money on is statutory meaning they don't actually have a choice about whether or not to pay for it (and it's stuff you would want them to be doing anyway). There aren't a lot of efficiencies left to be made in social care or teachers' salaries which are the really big outlays. Council tax alone doesn't come close to funding this stuff - all councils rely on money from central government and it's not enough.

No council worker is sitting at their desk thinking 'bwah ha ha, I'm raking in even more cash from residents and I'm just going to sit on it and continue to fuck up the bin collections for shits and giggles'. For a start they pay council tax themselves.

The SNP government cuts funding to councils in real terms every year, even in the rare years when the Barnett formula means Scotland is getting more money from Westminster. If you feel like you're paying more and more tax and getting less and less for your money then that's where the blame lies. The SNP have also repeatedly promised to get rid of council tax and replace it with something progressive but somehow never quite get around to it.

I live in Westminster and don’t particularly want to pay your council tax as well. It is for your local services. I don’t expect you to subsidise my cost of living just because London is the most expensive place to live in the UK.

@Spidey66 well you could just sign off mains water and use what "falls straight from the sky".
Maybe your waste water and effluent will magically rise up into the sky too? Or you could build a composting loo in the garden?

@Proudboomer

The poll tax was a much better way to pay for local services. I think when it was introduced the levels were too high and needed some readjustment but the overall idea was good.

Take my household 5 adults and I pay the same community charge as 3 other household in my 6 household road which consist of only 2 adults so we are paying less per adult but using more.

I agree - but as a single occupant of a house I would say that wouldn't I Unfortunately the rabble rousers/lefties decided that it was unfair even though many of the people who were adversely affected would probably have had help to pay and if unemployed pay nothing

Scottish council tax is eye watering. We
pay £4K plus.

That’s the top banding, so most people don’t pay that. I live in a 4 bed semi on the outskirts of Glasgow and pay just over £2k pa AND that includes water charges, which the English have to pay on top of council tax.

would you prefer to pay the fees separately?

not uk and we pay yearly bills for:

• street maintenance and cleaning
• refuse & recycling collection
• tree maintenance
• parking wardens

etc

I pay more for my 3 bed detached than Buckingham Palace does

Does anyone know how much CT they pay? If I'm paying more I want to have a framed cross stitch of the quote above hanging in my hall!

Fingers crossed that we don't need to pay it much longer. This is something Rushi sp? Wants to do away with.

In some countries council tax is the responsibility of owners / landlords and not tenants. I think it is really unfair that tenants are required to pick up this financial burden.

How can it be right that a million pound property in Westminster is the same or (often lower) CT rate than a 2 up, 2 down house in Yorkshire?

Because Westminster is a different council and provides different services.

They tried to make it a per person cost but the 8 people living in that 2 up 2 down, (using more local services) had to pay more than the single person living next door decided that was really unfair and had a riot about it.

Yes it’s an incredibly unfair tax. Many people are put in a high band and it’s really difficult to fight it if your house is new and there is no comparison property. Home improvements and increase in values aren’t taken into account. So some people are vastly underpaying. It’s also capped so you’ll pay the same for a modest house as for a mansion. Single people only get 25% off the cost yet you don’t pay anything extra for having 3+ adults in the house

Fucking hell. We are paying £400 more a year in C.Tax than Westminster and we live in a working class area of Swale!!!