Council tax very unfair to single people

[Lettuceandtomatoes]

The council tax for my area is £1800 full whack, a single person 25% off. I pay £140 a month which is ok until I realised the three adults next door are paying £60 pounds each and a couple paying £90 each. So why this inequality aimed at single people, picking up the tab?

Read up on Margaret Thatcher and the Poll tax riots ...

Well it’s about prudence. It’s not deemed prudent to use one-off capital receipts to fund recurring expenditure because what do you plan to do when you’ve used the one-off resources? Maintenance is an on-going requirement. If it’s not on-going it’s arguably enhancement and then they could make a case to use capital resources instead of revenue funding.

The same rule doesn’t apply to national government, however…

They tried a per person charge, saying it wasn't popular is an understatement! Everyone thinks they pay too much but yours sounds cheap compared to here

My preferred system would be an actual property tax collected centrally (most countries have property taxes) plus a local income tax, with the proviso that central government funds the majority of council spending.

It’s not the price, it’s about the unfairness

You factually stated “Obviously not but there’s 3 times the risk (of house burning down) with 4 adults”. This poster is quite rightly asking you to provide some actually statistics to support that.

You could easily argue it the other way, if I live alone and leave a candle burning when I leave the house there no other adults who could blow it out to avoid a fire, if I live alone and am in a rush in the morning I could forget to turn the oven/gas hob off and there wouldn’t be another adult there who could notice and switch it off thus avoiding a fire, if I’m asleep and something catches light there would only be me to notice & put a fire out versus 3 adults who could spot it otherwise and could avoid a call to the fire service… you can argue it either way.

"Poll tax riots - Wikipedia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax_riots

It was really nasty at the time

It is really unfair and as my dd will leave college this summer I'll lose the single person discount 😕

Being single is financially unfair in pretty much every aspect of life though.

It set neighbour against neighbour

Council Tax is based on what a property was worth in 1991.....egh ! When is a political party going to have the balls to say, what nonsense that is, and propose a re-evaulation of every property in the country (as has happened in Wales), Or, propose a new system of local taxation.

Ours is 360/month and just 1 person working in our property, but 4 people.

The Charge proved extremely unpopular; while students and the registered unemployed had to pay 20%, some large families occupying relatively small houses saw their charges go up considerably, and the tax was thus accused of saving the rich money and moving the expenses onto the poor.[4]

Surely if every adult we're employed it is only right they pay?

Prior to council tax was poll tax and prior to poll tax were rates. None of these systems seems to have been without it's failings and all seem to be a disservice to someone.

A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources.[1] Poll is an archaic term for "head" or "top of the head". The sense of "counting heads" is found in phrases like polling place and opinion poll.[2]

This seems to be it's failing and where the exemption process of the current system could be mixed in with a per capita tax.

I mean ….really? 🤣

You'll be asking him for housekeeping I hope

There was no student exemption. Every student in a tiny box room crammed into a corridor of each hall of residence at my university was expected to pay the same as the gentry landowners. Of course there were riots.

You’re the one who started making factual statements like “3 adults so 3 times the risk” with apparently zero evidence to back it up🙂

I think a 25% discount is fair. Council tax covers some things that don't change no matter how many people are in a property - street lighting, pavement and road maintenance and cleaning, bin collection to name a few. The discount recognises that a one adult household will typically use less of some services.
Council tax pays for a lot of things that are for the good of everyone too, such as schools, should those of us without children request a child free discount to remove the percentage that goes towards schools? And ask parents (some of whom will be single parents) to make up the difference? No that would be ridiculous.

Really it's about noone wanting to pay much, noone wanting to work much. Everyone wanting all the services, but screw everyone else.

You have the choice to move into a houseshare and only pay 25% (or potentially less).

The per person tax didn't work, a policy based only on the property was felt to be unfair so we have this hybrid system.

Did you mean 4x? Either way, where is the evidence for this?
What if an occupant is a smoker? Or uses hair straighteners or worse still, a smoker that uses hair straighteners?
A single parent is likely to use more services than a couple without children but that latter will be charged the full council tax.
It is difficult to factor in all the variables and just being a sole occupant doesn’t automatically equate to 50% less demand on council run services.

It's random alright. My 1 bed (52 sq m) is Band E at £196pm, and that's fairly reasonable for London. My last flat was also Band E (39 sq m) and £140pm last year.

My friend back in my home town lives in a 2 bed terrace and that's Band A, but Band E there would be more than I'm paying in Central London. Basing it on property value as decided by location makes no sense to me either.

Id prefer to pay more tax to get more services. What we currently have is an ever increasing cost of living which is going on servicing wage bills and little else.

And your evidence is…….Fairly obvious more people more risk without your stats

The poll tax was absolutely not fair. It was not designed to be fair. It was designed to enable those living in very large high value homes to pay less. It was massively regressive.

If you believe in being responsible for yourself and don't like the CTax situation - get a lodger

The provision of services isn't lessened by 50% because you live alone. Your bins are still emptied, the streets are lit, the roads are maintained, the police will attend a crime, the streets are still cleaned etc just the same amount as if you had 27 people in your house.

Would you feel better with a poll tax, whereby each adult has to pay? It makes no odds to me personally.