What are your thoughts on replacing council tax with land value tax?

[MikeRafone]

So what are the thoughts to scrap council tax and instead tax value land?

that is what Andy Burnham wants to do if he gets where he want

he sees council tax as a regressive tax, as unfair and wants to see it changed to a land value tax.

Churchill was. In favour of Land tax as a fairer system. Advocated for by Adam Smith the founder of modern economics and Milton Friedman adviser to Margaret Thatcher

So my 2 neighbours and me have same sized plots. We are a family of 4, the other is a widow living in the family home alone now and the third has been converted to 6 flats which would sleep up to 14 if 2 per bedroom.

their wheelie bins are triple ours

so so they would pay 1/14th say of the widowed neighbour despite using more services. Obviously they pay less than her presently but I would imagine the property as a whole pays more

council tax needs reform but I’m not sure lvt is the silver bullet

No, this is the entire point of land value tax

the freeholder pays on the value of the land the house sits on not the tenant or the leaseholder

The whole point is it wont be like council tax as a regressive tax and instead of raising taxes it will tax differently, this with less money pay less proportionally instead.

Currentlly if you live in a home worth 20 million you pay no more than 3x what a A band is paying. that could be worth £500k

This is where particularly places such as Westminster residence benefit as they are paying £1100 for a D band council tax and can be living in a house worth £5 million

The residents of the converted building into flats - wouldn't pay anything, the landlord or freeholder would

Well half are owners so they will pay it - not sure why you assumed they were all renters

and of course it will impact rents. It’s naive to think otherwise

The poll tax was unpopular but the current system is unfair. Some houses have 4-5 adults/grown children paying the same as a young family with two parents. And the single person discount should be 50%, not 25%.

It should be on the value of the property, including land, not just land. Everything is currently valued for council tax from valuations in the 90s, which is ridiculous. The system doesn’t need changing, the valuations do- they need to be current values.

Why though? More land doesn't cost more money or put more on services. Completely illogical.

According to AI, if you live in a flat you'd probably pay slightly less tax, and in a house slightly more.

Seems like a fairer policy than what we have.

Okay, so under your proposal

If you are an owner, but at leaseholder, what happens?

Also, I am currently in a shared freehold flat. It doesn't make any sense that the land all the flats are built on get valued and the price set accordingly. It would then be a nightmare because we'd have to find a way to pay on behalf of all the freeholders and why should we all pay the same? Just because of the value of the land the block is built on? So you're proposing that from my small one bed I pay the same amount as someone in a three bed.

At the moment we all have an individual bill for council tax and it is calculated on the basis of the size of our flat. Which makes a lot of sense.

I also would be in favour of a per person charge. People keep pointing to the poll tax riots. However, that was so many years ago - I mean I was a child - politically speaking it's a lifetime ago

I think people have moved round to the idea that you maybe pay per person if you're paying for council services.

i'm also quite suspicious of the land tax thing because it would create a huge amount more gravy train jobs and a pretty much constant source of them given the fluctuation in land values.

I'm aware of people who are still in the same council tax band in in spite of having extended their houses, mum knows a couple of these. But surely that's on councils being crap for not doing an assessment.

Couple of people in my building had to go to tribunal with the council - as a new build you can't relate to prices from 1994 or whatever it is and there were a couple of flats that were priced really oddly. They got changed though.

I suppose no one wants to go to the council and say "why am I paying the same as number nine when number nine has had a full extension to the side and the back".

No. The poll tax was per adult, no increase for those with children. A family with children use more council services so should pay more.

Do they want another reason for people not to have children though? We need them to fund welfare with their taxes.

Westminster council tax is low because the council chooses to subsidise it with income generated from other areas. I presume there's nothing to stop government changing rules on council tax to prevent that from happening.

It is debatable. Many would say that more people equal more workers. Not always the case unfortunately.

The people on the take aren't the Labour government. The people on the take are those who want you to blame the Labour government and immigrants.

Labour need some new ideas - it’s not about more/higher taxes - it’s about taxing smarter and accepting we are in a globalised economy

I'm also in Ireland now, and am absolutely gobsmacked at the amount of CT an ordinary person in an ordinary house must pay in CT. There would be riots in the streets here if they tried to do that! In fact when water rates were mooted, the outcry and demos and so on resulted in water rates being abandoned!

We do pay a Residential Property Tax alright, but it is very affordable, can be paid through payroll, direct debit, or annually. It is administered and collected by the Revenue (HMRC in UK). Tenants don't pay, landlord does, but I reckon that's reflected in the rent. Mine is under E500 pa. That covers everything like roads, maintenance, libraries etc. Schools are funded from Central Exchequer funds, so the council has no say in how schools operate or are funded. We do pay for bin collection, that's not covered under the property tax. It costs me E22 a month for fortnightly green, brown and black bins. Not too bad I reckon.

I would hate a council tax. It is so arbitrary. But I don't know if LVT is any better. Maybe it spreads the load around a bit better. And I think councils in UK have far too much power BTW, and not enough fund collection is centralised.

It’s the value of the property - it’s fairer than just taxing land value alone, as proposed.

I live in social housing near an historic city, and the house prices are wild. I simply couldn’t afford it.

council tax should not be a thing, we already pay tax.

I can see this leading to a load of appeals as land value isn’t as simple as each square metre in a certain postcode area is £X

and if you are paying a % of MV then they need to consider stamp duty as part of the equation

I think they need to be better at making local councils responsible for fewer things

my council has started putting in benches and seating areas around the place. All very nice but who wants to sit next to a main road having their coffee. That money could have been better spent making some of the dingy alleyways safer for example

My personal view is like when we lived in Denmark we should do away with it altogether and pay a separate ringfenced ‘local ‘ income tax of 3% based on household income. I also think stamp duty at buying point should go and it be a 4%charge at selling on difference between buying and selling price - so in some cases would be nil - in others who have made a huge profit much higher. And anyone who has paid stamp duty already - that is factored in to what is due, some may actually get a rebate !

Excellent plan. Multi millionaires should be paying more than ordinary houses. property is one of the most sensible things to tax because the rich can’t move it overseas like they do for bank accounts.

And for flats, it might mean the leaseholder of the block pays, not the individual owners.

I believe it's the unimproved value, @BeardySchnauzer, and that 'Proponents estimate that over 83% of households would pay less under an LVT than under the current Council Tax system', from my basic scan of LVT-related websites.

So you're thinking in terms of a "kind of" Capital Gains Tax for the principal private residence? I don't think there's any charge on a profit made on selling the family home at the moment.

That might stop people selling.

Well they would say that 🤣. The government aren’t going to introduce something that brings in less money overall

I suppose I’m curious to know if it would be done on a local basis or countrywide

One big difference is you pay 20% tax from the very first cent - with quite a low tax credit back if I remember correctly and then 40 per cent at similar earnings levels to uk- I may be wrong but I remember seeing this when I looked at moving around Brexit time