Council tax and pensioners. Please someone explain...

[MrsDoolittle]

The last thing I want to do is insult anyone.
I think I need this one explaining to me though because I am mightily confused.
I watched Trevor MacDonalds programme last night about pensioners and council tax but I'm afraid I have a huge problem.
If pensioners don't pay any council tax, who will?
They say they are 25% of the population, enough to scare the government big time and they want total abolition of the council tax.
What upsets me is who they think the people who are able to pay are?
Taxpayers? We are, but honestly we can't afford to pay theirs aswell.
We have a healthy double income between us, however it's all spoken for with student debt repayment, rent, childcare, cars and all domestic bills. We don't own a house because we can't afford one, we have no assets.
The likeliehood is there will be no state pension for us when we retire.
Really, I'm not complaining but my question is this; if pensioners don't pay tax and they make up 25% of the population , and this is going to increase...Who will?

[Caligula]

The reason the council tax is much much higher than the rates ever were proportional to income, even though many more individuals are paying it, is because the amount of money that came from central government has decreased.

Council tax is still a tiny percentage of local area funding though. Most funding still comes from central government.

Expat - one of the reasons we're stuck with this anomoly (how the hell do you spell that?) of individuals being taxed on the value of their home, is because it is a watered down version of the poll tax. The Tories wanted to abolish all property tax completely, but they didn't get away with it, however the council tax is as near to the poll tax as they dared.

And it still hasn't been reformed or abolished in favour of a system related to income.

[LIZS]

Our tenants paid the Council tax - seemed to be the norm. tbh we paid more when our house was empty (10% discount) than my DM does as she lives alone (25% discount) although that only changed this past April (previously 50% discount for unoccupied homes). Don't think she gets anything on top of that.

[tallulah]

That's just it though, why should it be a huge bill? Especially on top of all the other huge bills.

[MrsDoolittle]

Point taken Gomez, but still I bet it will be cheaper than excluding pensioners from paying council tax. If you get my point?

[PeachyClairPumpkinPie]

Deffo tenants pay council tax.

I have no issue with anyone on a low income geting help with what is a huge bill, but if pensioners think they're entitled to more.... why shouldn't that be low income famillies? Or anyone else on a small income? I don't get why they consider themselves as exclusive in their need.

(reminded of time pensioners back home protested by walking over a crossing repeatedly for several hours, dh couldn't get to nursery to pick up ds2 as said criossing was at end of our road, told bty pensioners to f off!! )

[Gomez]

"Okay, we need to improve the services to the weak and infirm and increase the amount of social care for those people.
Abolishing council council tax only solves a symptom, not the problem!"

And how do we fund this?

[expatinscotland]

Yeah, that's a far out sort of concept to me, QoQ. Most states in the US have tax penalties in place that making owning a second home quite unattractive. The majority of landlords are property corporations that own and/or build huge 'apartment complexes'.

I'd never met anyone who had an individual landlord till I came here.

[HRHQoQ]

the landlord pays the CT?? We had to pay ours while renting [frown]

[expatinscotland]

ACtually the landlord doesn't pay, his tenant does!

Dunno, it will always be a foreign concept to me, charging people a tax on a property they don't - and probably can't afford - to own whilst the real owner doesn't pay.

[expatinscotland]

Well, there're are plenty of us working as bloody hard as those who are now pensioners who will be in the same boat as they are now in not too long.

It just seems such a rip that the landlord who owns the flat next to me - who can obviously qualify for or buy a £150,000+ flat, something that will probably never happen for us bar a Lotto win - pays the same amount we do.

My SIL and her partner have never worked. They pay £20/month in CT b/c that's what their ability to pay is assessed at. Yet they have the same level of income left after bills that we do working our a*&es off.

[MrsDoolittle]

Okay I will go with that one.
Still worries me though that we are going to hit for a HUGE different tax if council tax is abolished.
As middle income earners, we don't qualify for alot of rebates and we don't earn enough not to need it sometimes!
The reality of an aging population is going to hit sooner or later. More pensioners and not enough tax payers!!

[HRHQoQ]

but there's a whole group of people (expat included I think ) who'd like to see CT scrapped for good - and a better system brought in that's fair for EVERYONE (or at least most people)

[MrsDoolittle]

Okay, we need to improve the services to the weak and infirm and increase the amount of social care for those people.
Abolishing council council tax only solves a symptom, not the problem!

[HRHQoQ]

where they campainging for CT abolition for EVERYONE, or just for Pensioners?? There's a large number of people (many MUCH younger than pensioners) who would like CT to be scrapped - and fairer and better way brought in......

[HRHQoQ]

" My point is you all assume pensioners are poverty stricken, when many of them are better off than many tax payers."

11 million pensioers in the UK - 1/3 of them are living in poverty - that's still a large number of people.........

And who said "ALL" pensioers are poverty stricken? I don't recall anyone on here saying that..

[MrsDoolittle]

I'm talking NOT about the very weak and physically unable pensioners, I meant

[MrsDoolittle]

I wonder of anyone here actually saw Trevor MacDonald's programme?
I'm talking about the very weak and physically unable pensioners, I'm talking about those like the Rev. who went to prison.
If you watched the programme you would have seen 'pensioners' who were very able. My parents are pension age, however, they are now living better lives than they did since before we were born.
Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge them it, they worked b**y hard for it. My point is you all assume pensioners are poverty stricken, when many of them are better off than many tax payers.
On this programme they were most definately campaigning to abolish council tax.

So am I to assume that none of you think that NOT ALL pensioners should avoid paying council tax, just those in need? I can live with that, that's fair.

[FrightfullyPoshFloss]

I think you have rich pensioners and poor pensioners and all those in the middle. All too often it is those in the middle who get the most stuck (ie working but no better off by the end of it all than if they had claimed benefits), and that dosen't matter what age you are. Therefore it shouldn't be dependant on age, but income. But then, debts wouldn't be taken into account. Nothing is ever fair. there are always going to be aggrieved parties. I am sorry that at the moment so many of our elderly people have to struggle after working so hard.

[HRHQoQ]

tallulah - can't your DD get a parttime job????

[tallulah]

expat, people used to pay rates, which was an amount worked out on the potential amount you would get if you rented out your house (or something like that!). So if you had a big house in a nice area you paid more, and a little place in a grotty area would pay less. Then they brought in the community charge (poll tax) which charged a set amount for every adult in the house, on the basis that a little old lady on her own didn't use as many local services as the family of 10 next door. Unfortunately the councils got very greedy and decided that they would take the amount that the average family had been paying in rates and make that the amount for each person. So everyone's tax doubled. There were riots and protests and the charge was replaced by council tax, which is based on your home's value in 1990. Of course in 1990 we were at the height of the last property boom (& my house wasn't even built!).

People go on about pensioners "fixed incomes". We both work full time. My dh will never earn much as he has no skills or qualifications. I work in the public sector. Our raise for the past few years has been about 2% per year. All our bills have gone up by huge amounts (council tax by 16% the other year and another 12% this year- it has more than doubled since 1997 when we moved here). Our children are getting bigger and costing more to feed. My DD went to uni last year so we lost our Child benefit and tax credits for her at a stroke- something like £45 a week. According to the Govt she's an adult so we don't get anything for her, but according to student funding she's our dependent so her loan is based on our income, not hers, and because we both work ergo we are "well off" and we are told we can support her. We have to pay for her to get backwards and forwards to uni and we are supposed to maintain her- only we can't afford to.

Hundreds of so-called middle earners are in the same boat. How can we afford to just keep paying more and more?

[HRHQoQ]

but they're no-one is actually campaigning for the abolition fo CT - well not according to Help the Aged or Age Concern........

[expatinscotland]

Who thought up this council tax business anyway? What a crock! Never heard the like till I got here.

Local income tax is what we have in the States, and it's usually rolled into something called a 'sales' tax, which is like a VAT, applied onto what you buy - with stuff like food exempted. Of course, it varies by locale, but it's usually a penny or two out of the sales tax on each item.

If you own a property, then you pay property tax.

[expatinscotland]

The original poster did:

'The last thing I want to do is insult anyone.
I think I need this one explaining to me though because I am mightily confused.
I watched Trevor MacDonalds programme last night about pensioners and council tax but I'm afraid I have a huge problem.
If pensioners don't pay any council tax, who will?
They say they are 25% of the population, enough to scare the government big time and they want total abolition of the council tax.
What upsets me is who they think the people who are able to pay are?
Taxpayers? We are, but honestly we can't afford to pay theirs aswell'

[HRHQoQ]

Expat - you already said earlier how much you pay for your electricity - and you don't have the heating on much. £200 winter fuel allowance is absoultely nothing if you're living in old victorian houses like these, espeically when you HAVE to have the heating on from October-February time. I don't think anyone has said ALL pensioers think that they should pay less - unless I missed something somewhere???

QoQ - that sounds quite good (apart from the catch - but how many people know about it.......

Obviously MT and the likes shouldn't be exempt (or the Queen [qink])

[expatinscotland]

They'll waste money as long as they're permitted to. And no one seems to be stopping them from doing so.

I reckon they always have wasted money. I've never lived in a council that doesn't.

Until they're forced to cap increases at or below inflation, they'll keep up the trams, lamp-posts, etc. business.

Or until the whole thing is overturned, which doesn't seem bloody likely.