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?

@FedUpAtHomeTroels you are paying as much as my mother in law in her 3 bed house in London. Value £700k. But she has never earned more than 18k per annum her entire life.

In principle, I support increasing what Londoners pay. That is what most tax equality campaigners advocate But this is only because I can probably afford an increase as someone who bought in London in 2019 unlike my mother in law who bought in 1997 and never imagined her house would ever be worth so much. There are so many elderly people in London in million pound houses who are on low incomes/pensions. my mother in law thinks that her council tax is like 'rent'. I think it has been quite a while since she paid London rent!

@Blossomtoes
Thanks....thought I was going bonkers there.

As mentioned I lived through that period as someone on a low income. It was a horrible period in British history.

@BrendaBubbles

Every single penny of my pay was accounted for but I was still expected to pay the same as someone on 10x my income? And that’s fair?

You still are if you live in a similar sized house. And if you’re suggesting you could get a massive reduction now due to benefits.. you could then too. It was 20% of the usual amount you had to pay.

But at the time everyone no matter if they lived in a bedsit like me or a mansion had to pay the same. Let’s say that figure at today’s prices was £150 a month. If you were in a bedsit on a low income, £150 was huge and could mean you couldn’t eat. £150 is nothing to James Dyson.

I can’t see why people don’t understand this?!

I live in a Band E property in East Yorkshire, and pay approx. £1850 pa in Council Tax. The services I receive are, largely SH**E.

Having moved from North Hertfordshire where the bill was very similar, but the services were of a much higher standard, I have often pondered why the Council here get away with such utterly awful provision.

I have come to the conclusion that the gentle, rural, compliant and generally modest folk of East Yorkshire complain less, thus the wide range of 'managers' and idiots who are paid inflated salaries to preside over shocking services (of a standard which would not be tolerated by stroppy Southerners), get away with doing very little for their money.

It wouldn’t matter how money for local services is assessed and collected, it will cause complaints. When the ‘poll tax’ was introduced, it was condemned by many, although it seemed a reasonably fair way for everyone to pay towards their local services. Surely if there are, for example, 5 wage earners in one household, then it’s quite unfair that their council tax is the same as their next door neighbour on a small pension, who just gets a 25% reduction.
During that period, I recall a work colleague who had a council property bitterly complaining that it was totally unfair that her and her partner had to pay the same as myself and DH, as we had our own house, which was bigger than theirs. The fact that their household income was definitely higher than ours, and our mortgage rate was around 16%, completely bypassed her. The size of your property does not necessarily equate to higher ability to pay.
I feel that the fairest way would be to tax on income, but it would have to be administered by central government, otherwise there would be a huge disparity from area to area.
It’s human nature to not relish paying for things which are quite abstract, but unfortunately that’s life.

PS I was on a low income but not eligible for benefits. At today's levels I was probably on about 15-16k.

@Gwenhwyfar

"In your example, why should "Lord Muck", who receives the same bin collection as, has to deal with the same potholes as C&M, whilst probably not using any other council services other than maybe planning, pay any more than C&M?"

He doesn't call the police if he gets burgled? His bin collection is probably more complicated too if he doesn't live on a street.

Where we live there are some homes which would be regarded as mansions, some nearby have 100m + drives, they either get one of the "help" to put the bins out, which have to be picked up from kerbside, or use private refuse collection services.

They probably would call the police, but the vast majority of police funding is not from council tax, there is a precept on the Council Tax bill, but the majority of the funding comes from central taxation.

I remember thinking at the time a fairer system would be a certain % of your income, say 5% or something. That to me is the fairest way.

I really, seriously suffered in the poll tax era. In fact I could quite easily have gone to prison, if it wasn't for the fact I kept moving to evade it. Imprisoned for living on the poverty line. That's not right.

@Spidey66 sorry, I get irrationally cross at people who complain about having to pay for clean safe water and respond before checking out the rest of your posts and realising your tone is challenging not whinging

I have a slightly skewed perception because in Wales water is not for profit (well most of Wales and some of Herefordshire) so I'm quite content knowing that the money I pay goes directly towards making sure the water I drink is safe rather than lining some American banking firm's pockets (Southern Water)

People also need to take on board the reason I was on the poverty line was because I was training to be a nurse. I was one of the last of the traditional apprenticeship model of nurse education. A year or so later I would have been a ''nursing student'' rather than a ''student nurse'' so would have been exempt from the poll tax (if it was still going then). As an employee, no such luck.

Didn't bother me before I moved house. Now it pisses me off massively.

I'm in West Yorkshire and pay £215 per month. For pretty much nothing!
They don't maintain the road as it's private, there's no street lighting, one bin a month recycling and no green waste collection at all.
I paid £90 a month with previous council and received all those services regularly.

I also can't believe how highly banded our estate is. Ours is the smallest and crappest house but apparently is the same band as all those around us worth twice as much.

@GivenUpEntirely
I was seriously joking about the water rates. I always joke about water rates when it's pouring with rain as it is today.

Not joking about poll tax though!

@Spidey66

So it’s fairer that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer? Which is what basically happened with the poll tax.

As I’m said, why am I paying towards children’s services and schools despite not having any of my own? Why should people pay towards the NHS when they use private medicine? Because that’s what happens when you live in a welfare state.

People were being taken to court and put in prison for not being able to pay the same amount of poll tax as someone on a much higher income and that’s seen as fair?

Let’s say from tomorrow everybody from James Dyson to the single parent mum of 2 working as a carer all had to pay £1000 a month income tax a month. Would that be fair?

Clearly I can’t be the only person who thinks the poll tax was wrong, otherwise we’d still have it.

So it’s fairer that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer? Which is what basically happened with the poll tax.

It's an argument of jealousy fuelled by the enumerate. The "rich" already pay far more tax than the "poor". Hammering the "rich" doesn't generate enough money in reality, it's been tried and failed, there's just not enough of them or they leave.

Hammering the massive number of "middle earners" is where the bulk of the money comes from.

The poll tax was an attempt to make everyone pay their fair share of the cost of running their council services.

It made sense, why should a house of 8 people, play the same as a house of 2, when the money is for the services that are in the main proportional to the number of people using them. (i.e. Bins, parking, schooling and social care).

As we know it wasn't popular with those who hadn't had to pay their proportion before, leaving us with the floored system we have today.

It goes a long way to explain why your council tax is so high now, you're probably paying many times "your share" as some else isn't.

P.S. Most people I know who live in big houses are skint anyway.

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

You must live somewhere very nice. Mine is £1600 band C.

@Spidey66
Binmen are quite well paid, (around £26000?) then there’s overtime. Indeed a teaching colleague calculated that he could earn as much on the bins as he did teaching.

Is enumerate a bit like eliterate?

This is the alternative to Council Tax that is being proposed:
fairershare.org.uk/proportional-property-tax/
So, a tax that rises every year in line with the increase in property prices. While your income won't be rising at anything like that rate. But don't worry, if prices crash your bill will reduce. Oh please.
No 25% discount for single occupants.
Deferred pyt if you can't afford the increase. Labour once tried this but it was very unpopular and they dropped it, if I remember correctly.

PissedOffNeighbour22 Here in East Yorkshire we are constantly told that our services are inferior to those of West Yorks due to lower numbers of CT payers. I do not buy that as an excuse. The problem here is the thick idiots who call themselves 'managers' of which there are dozens, and achieve absolutely nothing and derive an easy life from it. When I have challenged several of them about the cr*pness of their provision, several have responded with: "I've worked in WEST Yorkshire" as if it's a badge of honour and makes them 'well 'ard'. I find that hilarious.

OK Binmen may have been well paid, but student nurses weren't. Maybe my fictional couple should have included a student nurse rather than a binman.

@Blossomtoes

Is enumerate a bit like eliterate?

And floored like flawed?

It should be based on income, not property value. The current system makes it so hard to move up the property ladder if you want to go from a flat to a family house. We haven't had a pay rise in years and are on slightly below average wages (no luck getting better paid jobs), can just about afford the bigger mortgage but the council tax hike is a killer.

@amillionrosepetals It is one possible model, that would actually result in many people paying less. It is overly simplified, but does have some positive attributes.

Labour didn't propose the above model, they didn't propose one particular model at all. But the media caught on to John McDonnell once belonging to a group that advocated for a similar model, and wrote a heap of misleading articles about it.

Council tax reform is much needed, but it is complex and would need to take into account a whole combination of factors.

There can't be that many households with 3 or more earners. And the majority which are the 3rd earner is likely to be a low paid trainee / apprentice or just graduated and not earning much.

However given councils get a low percentage of their income from it, a bit of me thinks we should scrap it. However one thing that council tax does discourage is second homes and encourages people to sell or rent rather than see empty property as 'money in the bank'.

If you were to go to a local income tax what happens in areas with a high percentage of holiday / second homes?

I don't buy any arguments about child free adults not benefiting from schools - you went to school yourself and someone paid for it.

I do think it's wrong that water companies are privately owned. They should never have been sold off - in my mind they should be not for profit organisations.
The only reason Scottish Water wasn't sold off is because Loch Katrine was gifted to "the people of Glasgow" so couldn't be sold and it continues to supply most of Glasgow's water.

[quote CorrBlimeyGG]@amillionrosepetals It is one possible model, that would actually result in many people paying less. It is overly simplified, but does have some positive attributes.

Labour didn't propose the above model, they didn't propose one particular model at all. But the media caught on to John McDonnell once belonging to a group that advocated for a similar model, and wrote a heap of misleading articles about it.

Council tax reform is much needed, but it is complex and would need to take into account a whole combination of factors.[/quote]
Thanks for the clarification @CorrBlimeyGG. I just vaguely remembered it being dubbed 'Labour's death tax'. The massive negative attribute of a tax increasing annually in line with property prices cancels out the positive attributes, at least for me.

The "rich" already pay far more tax than the "poor".

It makes sense that those who have more, pay more. If I take home £10K a month, I have far more disposable income than someone who brings home £1K. Why would I not give some of that up to provide better public services?