Council tax bill - is this wild or are yours insanely high too?

[Notmycircusnotmyotter]

My local council took £232 in direct debit today for council tax. I'll be honest, I don't budget to the pound, so was shocked when I saw it and assumed they had wrongly taken off my single person discount. But nope. £232 is what 75% of the council tax charge is for my 3 bed terrace.

WTAF. This feels insanely high.

please don't tell me all about bankrupt councils and adult social care. I've heard it. I know.

My point is how are ordinary people paying these sorts of bills? I'm a single parent of two on a decent wage and it stings.

Council tax has risen a lot ☹️. Did you not get a bill seen as you were surprised at the amount.

I hadn't taken notice of it if I'm honest

It depends on your area / house size doesn’t it?

Mine is a lot lower - but I do live in a one bed and I assume my area has less critical services to provide?

It does sting because I see it, so I share your pain. My income tax stings more though. I think it’s inevitable as we do have services that need funding. You should be closer to your finances though OP!

Mine is over £400 a month, yours sounds cheap by that metric!

ours has broken into the £300+ bracket now. We are in one of the councils who request a higher increase than 5%...and got it. Probably for their nice fat salaries...🙄

all of us paying for those public sector salaries

Mine is over £320 a month

You're not wrong council tax really hurt this month. It is so frustrating that central government make these expensive statutory requirements of councils but don't help with funding.

Exactly. Government bleat about helping the most vulnerable but pile taxes up. I earn a good salary, I should be comfortable, but I'm barely breaking even.

Well the cost of everything has risen, everything from the cost of the diesel to run the vehicles to the cleaning products, care costs are astronomical now for the elderly - don’t forget a lot of the homes are owned by conglomerates headed by private equity billionaires

Council run care homes are few and far between.

Our council tax is cheap, high density population, live in a flat. Think we’re the second cheapest in the country. Under £200 a month.

What does this mean? Do people who work in the public sector not deserve to be paid?

The vast majority of Council Tax goes on adult social care, ie care home and domiciliary care fees. It's a knock on effect of having an ageing population where people are living longer and the birth rate is reducing.

The second highest spend is children's social care - child protection, paying for children in care and children with disabilities.

Hardly any of it (proportionally) pays for salaries of council staff.

But fwiw I also pay the same as a single person and it stings even knowing what it pays for.

This is the way it is now, an ageing population costs

YANBU. Mine's £235 after 25% taken off. 😮 I try hard not to think about it.

£385pm here.

3 bed, 1 bath house in a nice location.

We could downsize but we our home isn't big and we can't find anything we would want to move to.

It's just so much! In my head it was about £150 and I made peace with that.

Is there a plan by government
at all except to squeeze and squeeze us until we just give up?

council tax (rates as was then poll tax) is a con bought in to replace land tax which was paid by the upper classes and they were very happy to see it so down the chain

so now we are landed with paying this tax whilst those above get to keep a bit more

id much rather pay per square meter of the land I own, it would be much fairer - but the 7th Duke of Westminster would disagree, im sure

Ouch. Ours just went up to £203 but I might stop moaning about it after seeing some of the amounts on here! Annoyingly ours is higher than our neighbour next door who has an identical house because she's never moved so it's never been reassessed. But good for her really!

@MikeRafone we should absolutely have a property/land tax. Other countries manage it.

About 15 years ago I lived alone in a little 2 bed which miraculously had an A band, I remember paying £63 a month! I’m paying £187 inc single discount over 10 months for a D 4 bed. The last few years of max % increases are really having an impact now. 😔

How would the property / land tax work? I don't agree with only homeowners paying for services.

It’s over £400 for us now. It is really painful on top of all the other increasing costs.

Mines going up because my son turns 18 he isnt working he is autistic and might fail his maths and English again because he cant seem to break the barrier in his exams he is always 2/4 marks behind where he needs to be its frustrating i honestly dont know where its going because adult social care is dire in my area and children's social services arnt much better they are all just wasting time money and effort in the wrong areas

Not mine. Band 3 salary, single parent and barely keeping my head above water.

Ours is £350ish. Water has also gone up.

My wages have increased by a much smaller margin. Not really sure how this will end 😂