Council tax is a c**t

[Upholstery]

What kind of a tax doesn't take account of how much money you have? It's all just a bloody con.

YABVU and a freeloader

Council tax is flawed, but taxing people based on what they earn rather than what they use just punishes working households. Those earning millions from passive wealth won’t be touched; they never are.

It will hit ordinary people who retrained, took risks and made sacrifices to buy bigger homes. Life is not fair and not all work pays the same. If you want to earn more, change your choices, don’t demand that others subsidise them.

Only c**ts feel they are entitled to even more from ordinary people who already pay large sums of tax.

My council gave a loan to a certain other council, who then went bankrupt.

I may be making it up, but I vaguely recall that there is a legal requirement for councils to achieve the best value for taxpayers. Which sounds great on paper. However in reality it means they can feel obliged to invest in more risky ventures that claim to have better returns. In a country where "due diligence" is a failed country music artist this leads to things like loosing money in bankrupt Icelandic banks.

So that's another black hole that was never filled.

If you want to earn more, change your choices and dont make others subsidise them

Do you mean that we should pay nurses, midwives, carers, hospital cleaners, porters, teaching assistants, the police, delivery drivers, shop workers etc more, or are you suggesting that people stop doing those roles? Seriously?

They mean we should all be stockbrokers and investment bankers and work in finance.

What whilst looking after our young children and elderly parents because nursery workers and care staff are so badly paid they're not jobs worth doing? That would actually be fun to watch.

No, of course not. Don't be silly. You'd hire staff to do that. Like they do.

Council tax is flawed, but taxing people based on what they earn rather than what they use just punishes working households. Those earning millions from passive wealth won’t be touched; they never are.
Do you mean the unearned income from savings? Mine is definitely taxed once over the £1k savings allowance - not millions so not in a sheltered scheme (if that's what you mean?).

@InlandTaipan Not what I am saying and pretending it is just a convenient way to dodge the real issues. Society already values work irrationally. Society pays footballers, influencers, celebrities and financiers and others obscene sums, while nurses, carers and cleaners are paid far less. That peculiarity is not caused by ordinary working households buying a bigger house, and it will not be fixed by squeezing them harder through council tax or some other random or wealth based tax. Oh and middle earners still have the same issues with elderly parents, children etc.

@SerendipityJane I am not arguing that nurses or carers should earn less, or that people should stop doing those jobs. Pay is also not the only reason that people leave this jobs. Middle earners don't set the rates that those people are paid. It's therefore ridiculous keep punishing people who currently earn more than them, while large corporations and those earning millions from passive wealth remain largely untouched, as they always do.

Its also just lazy to jump straight to nurses and carers v bankers. They are not the only socially useful jobs, nor even the lowest or highest paid joba (see above). There is a vast middle of ordinary workers teachers, engineers, technicians, admin people, tradies who are neither rich nor influential, yet somehow always end up footing the bill.

If people want to fix pay injustice, they should take it up with politicians, the markets, employers, media etc and change the system, not hammer families who worked hard to move from a small house to a slightly bigger one. But they won't because middle earners are far too convenient. What happens when the cash cow runs out?

@Lifestooshort71 Interest on ordinary savings is already taxed and no one is pretending otherwise. That is not what anyone means by passive wealth. It is about middle earners continually being squeezed and targeted because they are visible and easy to tax.

Please tell me which local authority this is because they are operating outside of the law.

The precise requirements are set out in the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992 (applicable in England and Wales).

in detail,here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1992/613/contents

You posted misinformation

You may not have realised it was false, but misinformation needs to be challenged

Absolutely this.
I believe that every single household should pay council tax unless they are a ft student. If you don’t pay for something you don’t respect it. Therein lies the crux. you should receive less in benefits if you don’t work to pay ct. By that I mean a smaller house for example.
If neither parent works then you should not be given a big house, your DCs should share bedrooms regardless of how many DCs you have. You should be allocated the smallest house possible and told that as soon as your eldest dc turns 18, you will be downsized and benefits cut. If one parent claims they don’t live with their partner then they should not be eligible for any reduction in ct. other than the single person reduction. They should also not be housed in anything other than a homo unless they are paying 100% of the rent.
Someone living in a house valued at say £450,000 should not be paying the same ct as someone who lives in a house valued at 6 million.

I am so glad this is just something in your head and not a reality.

If you don’t pay for something you don’t respect it.

Is about the only part of that prose I could agree with.

A former boss used to get regularly exasperated by a salesperson who used to call things "free" in negotiations. (Usually training). Because "free=of no value" (see also: NHS and education).

There is world of difference between:

Widgets: 2000
Training: 2000
Negotiated discount: -2000
Total: 2000

and

Widgets: 2000
Training: 0
Total 2000

But in reality the majority of taxpayers DO object to paying for things they don’t see a benefit in. Why do you think politicians bow to social pressure?
Why are so many people retiring early, as in before the age of 67? They absolutely know that they are no longer paying income tax and NI but are they upset about the consequences of that? No, not at all. I could write pages about how people are selfish and think of themselves. Dropping litter, graffiti, arson, fly tipping, tax avoidance, letting their dogs shit everywhere, throwing cigarettes in the floor, throwing rubbish out of car windows, living apart from their oh so that they can screw the tax payer, putting property in trust, refusing to pay for relatives funerals, not turning up for specialist appointments for their DCs at school, not adhering to advice about children/health, using passenger transport when they get a car on mobility, abusing blue badges, not paying child maintenance, not paying VAT, not declaring earnings, yet when anyone challenges this they are the unreasonable one ok………

Why are so many people retiring early, as in before the age of 67?

Because who wants any elderly fuckers when you have AI ? What with their ludicrous expectations, myriad health issues and rather contemptuous regard of modern work culture. And that is before you factor in the %age that have caring responsibilities.

I am guessing there is an unspoken sentiment that pensioners should earn their pension in the same way the young unemployed should earn their support.

Strange, this is what I found 'passive wealth' means (what I'd said in other words)

Passive wealth, often referred to as passive income, is unearned income generated from assets, investments, or ventures in which an individual is not actively or materially involved on an ongoing basis

Going back just over 100 years, it's what "independent means" meant. Which is the strata of persons who were above middle class (i.e. people who grubbed for a living, but usually in a profession) but below the gentry (who actually owned the land).

That's a rough overview.

TL;DR means you don't have to work for a living.

I can’t see myself working till I’m 67.

my dm retired at 60

if you can afford to retire earlier what is wrong with that. You would be still paying council tax

I've got eight years until I retire, but I can't see myself making it to that age. There's no chance in Hell that my wife's going to be able to work until retirement. She's 53 now and already registered disabled. We're just done. I'm a warehouseman/forklift driver/van driver, and my wife's a nursing assistant who can hardly walk at night sometimes due to the pain she's in. Aye, we're such selfish bastards, aren't we...?

Sorry to hear that about your wife

yes, it can’t be easy in a job that is quite physical

And how much stamp duty did you pay compared to how much stamp duty was paid for the property in Westminster? They probably paid more in stamp duty than you will pay in a lifetime of council tax. Then every time they get in their car they pay a congestion zone charge.

Over the years central Government have delegated more and more responsibilities to local authorities but not given much if any more money to cover this. So things that need to be paid for have increased year on year with no additional income to pay for them (this is of course over and above inflationary increases). The councils don't have an awful lot of freedom on how they spend their money as these are all statutory spending and tend to take up most of their income leaving very little for much of their traditional responsibilities.

At the same time, Governments of the day have manipulated how much is given by them to local authorities for political reasons e.g. certain London boroughs getting more help from the centre.

Every area is different in their demographics and therefore needs. In Kent for example they have a much higher cost for housing and supporting asylum seekers as that's where the majority arrive and most other councils refuse to take them, but there's no central Government help in paying for those costs. Some areas have much higher levels of unemployment than others due to various industries dying.

A poster early on in the thread suggested that local council workers are paid well and have half their time off sick on full pay. I earn about 20p an hour over minimum wage, and yes I did end up taking some time off sick recently - because I was working so hard I broke down due to stress, the 2nd person so affected in my small team in 6 months. Please don't judge all council staff by the wages paid to our board level people, it's notoriously badly paid for "normal" grades.

I retired at 60. Still pay income tax and council tax.