What was the Poll Tax?

[dogsod]

I'm too young to remember it and I can't for thw life of me figure it out. It was going to be a community charge that was replaced by council tax anyway? What's the difference?
What would it have cost you and what was it for?

I have googled it and it just comes up with long, pages and pages. Can anyone give me a clue please. Its brought up a lot on here and I'm getting a bit grumpy reading it and not knowing what it is

I can't believe the tories expected landlords to lower their rents. They are all landlords aren't they.

I remember buying the paper and seeing my friend from school on the front page complete with scarf round her head to disguise her face and welding a big fuck off piece of wood at a police man! Them were the days 😉

@Maireas I can't face it. if it's not anecdotal I just can't let it in.

I learned more about ww2 through my grandads child's eyes than I had in all of the schooling. and I took history! Very feelings based, me.

Of course they never expected landlords to lower rents.
It's always about making the rich richer.

Students only paid 20% of the poll tax. As did unemployed. Bad, but not quite as bad.

It was brought in first in Scotland, using us as Guinea pigs 🤬

Of course in those days there were no student fees....

Yup, just like the milk snatching.

Was such a turbulent time up here, as elsewhere. Fully in the throws of heavy industry decline too

I have a video of when I was a toddler and my two aunts were looking after me. I’m playing in the garden with a Wendy house and I knock on the door and my aunt who’s in the Wendy house jokingly says “ go away we don’t want your poll tax” 😂 Id never really understood it.

woah woah woah what's the milk snatching

"Well my dad's always said thatcher was an evil bitch and now I know why"

I'll hate that fucking monster and what she did to this country till the day I die.

Of course in those days there were no jobs...

The milk snatching was when she was Education Minister and stopped free school milk

Maggie Thatcher the milk snatcher !

Right
Get yourself a biography of Thatcher and Thatcherism.
You will be amazed.....

The housing crisis in this country is because of that evil bastard

They hounded everyone for it. Years and years later.

Re paying only 20% if you were a student or unemployed. It was still a new additional cost that you had not previously had to budget for. Wages did not go up to cover it and students just went into more debt as there weren’t as many part time jobs then. No high street coffee chains, cafes, restaurants like now. There were millions unemployed.

There were two fundamental problems with the community charge.

1. it was clearly unfair, punishing large families in small houses and benefiting small families or individuals in large houses.
2. the collection rate was very poor. Rates had a really high collection rate - because houses don't move. People could (and did) disappear to avoid paying.

And yes - colloquially know as the 'poll tax' as it was a head tax (i.e. on individuals), referring to Wat Tyler and the Peasants' Revolt.

Well Poll tax wasn't fair but nor is council tax either.

With poll tax everyone paid the same tax as it was per head regardless of income.

With council tax its based on a household but a single working person in a house compared to two working adults ends up paying more (even with a single person discount ) than two adults in a household sharing the cost. e.g. on a house paying £100pm council tax

Single person (one income) pays £75
Typical two person house (bringing in two incomes) - each person pays £50

Yet two people will use twice the amount of services covered than a single person.

Obviously if you start adding in adult children working and staying with parents it gets more complicated.

They must've written it off eventually as I never paid it and I was worried it would affect me getting a mortgage later on and it didn't.

In Scotland it wasn't written off until around 2015 (I think). Wasn't that long ago anyway

And Labour's response to Thatcher was pitiful until Neil Kinnock got elected. Although Michael Foot was a good man, it was pointless fucking navel gazing. Even Kinnock wasn't enough. John Smith was great but he died.
That's why so many old Labour people hated Corbyn because he was like a shit version of Michael Foot.
The Tories ended up destroying themselves rather than Labour doing it for them.

I remember as a young 18 year old living in a rented flat after just leaving home and a good job getting stressed and crying because I got fined if I remember rightly a hundred pounds!! for not paying it on top of what I already owed!
The stress and tears I was so upset I remember ringing them up but there was no Lea way and I was hard up for a long time over it as it was literally taking all my wages..

a shit version of Michael Foot
So true.