I honestly cannot afford to live

[Inkdrinker]

I work 40 hour weeks, yet I was paid 6 days ago and I'm already completely out of money. My rent is more than half of my pay, council tax is a further 250 pounds, my energy bills are ridiculous despite trying to cut down on using so much.

I have 3 kids to look after. How are people going survive this? This is by no means a ploy to ask others for money, I do not want anyone's money. I just want to know I'm not alone in this situation

So, @tornadoinsideoutfig , you'd prefer the poll tax route. It would be cheaper for you, at this stage in your life. Consider the picture when your DC are 18 and are asked to pay their share too.

I would accept that as I would be fair, once my child was no longer a full time student then there would be another wage to pay it from. The current system puts a higher burden on single parent and single adult households who already pay more per adult for most bills too. It's a struggle without the extra 50% CT burden.

Council tax is 50% of the cost of services to the house. It costs the same to have my bin emptied as yours. The same van goes past both our houses on Wednesday morning. It costs no more for my full bin than your half full bin because it still needs the same person to sling it into the refuse van, and that person is the cost. The same streetlights illuminate my house and my neighbours, regardless of the number of occupants. Those are fixed costs.

And then councils fund social and educational services. In Eastbourne, there's a high % of old people, so Rother Council has a huge budget for senior care. In London boroughs, where there are a lot more young parents, more is directed to schools. If you think about it a bit, it's fairly straightforward.

Yes, these services are what I was wondering about. Do things that relate to my house add up to 50% of CT expenditure?

@EffortlessDesmond well said x

@beachcitygirl The simple fact is we should ALL pay for everything.I agree we should all pay, well I think we agree, as it's what I'm trying to say. I am happy to pay a fee per household for things like bins, but the rest I think we should all pay. I don't think people should pay less towards things for the whole community just because they share a house with other adults.

The charge should be income related. From each according to their means etc.

I'm not up for an argument, just feeling pretty down. The 50% extra on CT is just one of many shit things. It was shopping night and I had to leave some things that DS likes as the were not essential. I know he was looking for them but he didn't mention it.

It works the other way sometimes too - for instance, I have my 3 adult children back living at home for various reasons. We still have the same bin capacity as a single person household, and it's never enough.

I'm not sure how things can be made fairer, though.

No, the poll tax works on the basis that every adult pays the exact same amount for the same services. Three adults in one house pay three sets of charges.

One adult apiece in three adjacent houses pay the same per person.

It's a flat rate tax that every adult pays.

This. Poll tax was the most iniquitously unfair tax ever. Any parent of a school age child who believes payment should be dependent on services used is effectively volunteering to pay more. Be careful what you wish for.

How so? At the moment if you want to reduce your council tax there's options for you to do that. Far more inequality if it's per person and not based on size/location of home. Can you really not see how someone with an income of £20k per year is going to be hit harder than someone with an income of £50k by a per person tax than they are by council tax in it's current form? Or do you think if people are poor it's their own fault, so if they're hit hard they've brought it on themselves?

We already have this too. It's called income tax.

I didn’t think it was, it was a levy on every adult. In my area the individual payment was less than half of our bill. As part of a two person household, I’d have been fine with it. When one or both of our working, adult children lived at home, I wouldn’t have thought it unfair either. We are now on a low retirement income, in a band B house, we have a single adult next door, whose income is more than double ours, yet she pays 25% less than us. Some might consider that unfair?

Perhaps a local income tax might be an option? It would certainly favour people like me!

And when the 18yr old's wage isn't high enough to pay it from? When they're not eligible for disability benefits but have a health condition limiting their ability to work more than say eg 20hrs per week?When they don't get on with their parents and need to leave the family home (possibly from being kicked out)? When the 18yr old has a baby or two of their own to pay for? People rioted because they couldn't afford to feed, clothe, house themselves/their DC, pay utilities and pay the poll tax on top.

Why is it unfair? Your neighbour has chosen to live in a Band B house when presumably they could afford to live in a higher band property. We live in a Band F property but we use exactly the same services as a childless couple in a Band A property, perhaps we should ask ourselves if it’s unfair that they pay less? Obviously we don’t because we’ve chosen to live where we do.

I'm not even going to try to reason with you any more. I'm only quoting this to point out how disgusting I find your opinion. You think people who are sick/disabled/elderly and quite possibly have very low income due to this should fund their own social care? Which would mean they often would get none as they can't afford it. So no help with the basics of survival. So they'd die. But that's ok just as long as you can pay less council tax. I guess the abused and neglected children have to carry on being abused and neglected then too, no children's social workers existing because children can't pay for them themselves. Ugh.

Every fertilised egg is already an individual human life, silly

oh dear

Yes I have more of my income coming out for rent and bills then I have gas and electric on prepayment meters as it is a rental property. The gas alone is around 130.00 a week and it’s hardly on as it’s only on, on a morning for the children and a night(not during). I have had to visit the food bank a couple of times and found them to be very scarce in my area due to the amount of people attending them. I’ve got more going out than I’ve got coming in and the food shopping amount is shocking. I’m doing everything I can to keep it down but with the school holidays now upon us, I can see it being worse. I’ve even had to borrow money regularly off a parent and I normally have only done that in the past when I’ve had a very difficult month but now it’s a weekly thing, as soon as I’ve paid back I’m borrowing again to keep afloat. My rent is about to be increased again and I’ve no idea how I’m going to cover that increase but my landlord has just remortgaged the house and stated before this that the rent barely covers the mortgage(my rent is around 200.00 more a month since lockdown and quite high for my area but all have been inflated in the area).

I'm on 20k myself, it's a struggle paying everything for a household on one wage, including 50% more council tax than if I had a partner.

I think it's wrong that there are options to reduce what you pay towards what is mostly things like schools and social care rather than bins just because you live with other adults.

No, I think none of these things. This is absurd!
I am taking about everyone paying towards these things fairly. The current system has single parents paying 50% more than someone in a couple. I have seen the argument that the single reduction is 25% because 50% is for the house, 50% is for the occupants but I don't see where this 50% for the house comes from when looking at expenditure.

funded by individuals not households
By this, I mean, funded by taxation on individuals not households. They could roll it into income tax (along with regressive NI) instead.