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.

Why do so many children have EHCPs nowadays? Surely there could be a crackdown on that to save money?

And I’d be the first at the barricades. It was a grossly unfair tax.

Yet another thread about people complaining about having to contribute to society and expecting others to pay for them......

They wouldn't get them and would be surrounded by the rubbish that everyone chucked on the street, their children would be uneducated and they wouldn't be able to get any social care for disabled or elderly relatives.

Maybe something like council tax is good thing after all?

Ireland fair significantly higher in standards of living.

They don't pay council tax and their services are funded by PAYE. In addition, their infrastructure is light years ahead of the UK. They also don't pay water rates, and the quality of the water is also superior. The UK is like a developing country is comparison.

Other countries fund that via PAYE and do not have council tax.

Because council tax is nothing to do with the amount of people living in a property. Which would actually be fairer!

Central government should pay for EHCPs and SEN provision.
We should do away with locally elected councillors with their vanity projects and death knell investments in property, and just have civil servants running the show. That or have fewer of them.
Pare local government back to the essentials and let light into its workings.
Now that local newspapers are a has-been the corruption and entrenched “computer says no” vibe in my local council is everywhere.

They're not though.
The new ones have been completed under 5 years and the tenants are already being relocated to address the damp/leaking issues they're having. Absolute sham.

George Osborne and David Cameron made sure that the poorest (Labour voting) councils would get the harshest cuts to central funding. That needs to be put right again.

I meant since Thatcher. I’m a childless couple and don’t mind paying a tax for others children and adult social services. But the way it is done is massively unfair and I can’t see how anyone can argue that council tax is a fair tax.

But they could only revalue our house because we’d extended - if we hadn’t, our house would still be band F even with the annexe (which has its own council tax listing).

It is what it is, we can afford it, I’m mostly cross that the specialist annexe builders didn’t warn us …

Social care is the highest proportion but SEND is the fastest growing. There is every possibility that unless we get control of the SEND budget, it could overtake social care.

Evil 🤦‍♀️

And that’s the problem. No government is going to put up income tax because everyone loses their shit every time it’s suggested and then complains about the state of public services in the next breath.

Sunak boasted about taking money from impoverished inner city councils and redistributing it to richer Tory voting areas.

The council tax takes no account of your income either. OK you can argue that of course people in the higher council tax bands should pay more as they live in a bigger house, but there are many anomalies. No one will reform the council tax though, too much of a controversial issue. We're Band E and it will probably be about £3k for 2026/27. Our neighbour's house, which is larger than ours, is only Band D. But we wouldn't query our Band in case theirs went up rather than ours coming down. Not a good idea for neighbourly relations! But council tax is an unfair mess. I don't think they'll be changing it anytime soon.

Personally I think adult social care, which accounts for a large amount of council tax, should be paid for by central government from general taxation, that would alleviate the burden on councils. In a generation's time anyway it will be even worse, when there won't be so many self-funders as less people will be homeowners.

In all fairness, the lower your council tax band, the more money you are likely to take out of the tax system.

The people in higher bands will most likely be in employment, and over council tax E/F, will probably be net earners.

Even without the cuts, the basic design of it is flawed now that so much social care is needed.

It's not a mystery why it's needed - when all those people now needing care were healthy working adults, the government knew it would cost a lot once they were elderly. But they failed to plan for it centrally and instead kept the model that local authorities cover costs.

And local authorities covering costs doesn't work for this, because they have to cover more costs in less affluent areas. And guess what, in areas where elderly people are less affluent, the rest of the population is less affluent too.

It's actual madness.

That isn't relevant for council tax though because most of it is spent on social care and in particular social care for the elderly. Dividing angels on the pinhead of how often you go to the library or how much rubbish you produce is pointless.

I despise how central government gives less money year after year to local government!

Completely not the case. Since when do people in bands A-C “not work.”

Hmm. The thread title has the c-word removed, but it's still in the URL...

And PAYE is the cruellest method of taxation in my view. The money never reaches your bank account, so the payslip is the only evidence you have of it being taken.

The title is separate from the URL. It's probably not worth the effort to go through and change the URL.