council tax band G & H to double

[StrawberryThief1930]

has anyone seen the rumours that the council tax rates for bands G and H are going to double?

I know everything is just rumours at the moment but im worried this one might stick. easy to implement in an existing system and doesn't require the revaluation of thousands of houses etc.

I'm about to buy a G band house. Seriously questioning whether we can afford it. The current council tax is £4k a year. so £8k a year. Over £300 a month more than we had budgeted. we have spreadsheets coming out of our ears trying to check we can afford this house. Buying with a 40% deposit. im sweating...

anyone have the same worries? or further thoughts?

I have a Band E property and it’s massive. Band G here are mansions, often abandoned because people who inherit them can’t afford to run them but can afford to keep them abandoned & a big reason they never go on the market is because there’s no real financial impact once a mortgage is paid off. Doubling or even tripling council tax will have no impact to the majority of owners.

Can’t they start converting some of the large Band H’s back into smaller properties? If there are far more smaller households, would this not make sense?

We are not a “Deregulated” country at all, we are a highly regulated and highly taxed country. It is why we have become less attractive to investment.
The public sector is mismanaged and efficient. The drive right now should be Government investment into AI and automation there and growing private sector jobs as they are less of a drain.
As it is Labour in power, we may miss this one chance that all other countries are grabbing to improve efficiency from AI. If we miss is completely, that will be us done.
Labour are playing from the old playbook and it is proving even more of a disaster than the Tories. We actually need leader and visionaries at this point running the country. Not those trying to cover their own backside via OBR (Reeves) and legally (Starmer). These two are programmed to not see the bigger picture and to just box tick as that is their thinking. It is a sad state of affairs for us all.
We are a promising talented country but have terrible leadership.

I don't see how it would be political suicide for Labour.

The amount of houses it applies to is small. About 4% of houses in the UK are in bands G and H, and a further 5% in band F. So if extra taxes are applied to all these bands that is to around 1 in 10 houses.

Couple this with the fact that people occupying these houses are more than likely dyed in the wool Tories than Labour supporters it doesn't look like a vote loser to me.

People who claim bands G and H are "the middle" aren't really making much sense. Even in Surrey you are talking probably 10% of the houses are in bands G and H.

So bands G and H are nowhere near "the middle", but very much "the top".

The reality is the vast majority of houses in bands G and H are exceptionally large and valuable houses, occupied by wealthy people.

An extra tax band for houses valued at more than £2million is somewhat overdue.

It is not the same as the title of this thread floated.

That would be reasonable but reviewed at intervals because of house price inflation

House we looked at was band G. Detached but no bigger than a semi with integrated garage and not a massive garden

larger detached houses in band F

I'd consider more bands quite fair. Maybe also at £5 million, £10million, £100 million or something. Or a sliding scale.

They seriously need to sort out all the valuation anomalies before doing anything like increasing council tax for specific bands. Some of the examples on this thread prove that.

I do think some of the comments about housing profit / unearned wealth being a bit of a justification miss the point that not everyone will have been able to buy at a time to benefit from this. It’s more of an argument for CGT on main residence (which I actually wouldn’t be against at something like 1 - 2% as a replacement for stamp duty) than council tax.

Everyone viewing a house to buy now and in the past already lives somewhere? Wanting something and having the money (credit) to buy it are two different things, that is all we are seeing now, people are just staying put and moving less.

It's probably fair to say that the vast majority of income poor asset rich who want to stay in a high band house "because it's their home and they've been in it all their lives" have benefited hugely from HPI over the years.

Unless of course "all their lives" means about 10 years, or they literally live in a castle.

There are of course exceptions to this generalisation, but for the vast majority it is true.

I think they do need to sort out the banding, but my guess is that a significant majority are banded correctly, and there is always the option if you feel the banding is inappropriate to challenge it. I think I would like to see the banding become something a bit more quantitative than it is at the moment probably a strong per sqm element and of course as other people have mentioned more resolution than "band g" which covers too much ground ATM.

But I'm guessing that if someone who has lived their entire life in one house really feels that their band was inappropriate in the 30 odd years CT has been running they should have challenged it by now.

@laserpumpkin

"They seriously need to sort out all the valuation anomalies before doing anything like increasing council tax for specific bands"

The information I have seen is that the preferred option was to add an extra band for the highest value houses, not to increase the tax for specific existing bands.

Which also has the advantage of being much quicker to carry out than "sorting out all the anomalies."

Quite where the new band would be, has been the real topic of discussion.

As far as I can see, the title of this thread was never correct.

It should be based on the services you use not on house valuations. I think a mixture of poll tax and pay at point of contact is the way forward, 4 individuals in a house use four times the bin space (for example) that one individual in a house does so they should all be charged individually?

They personally only benefit from HPI if they sell and downsize, which is why we need a property sales tax to replace stamp duty and council tax to be divided by number of adults in the council area not number and value of properties. The main reason they make it a set charge per property in the various bands plus single person discount is that they don"t have the resources to properly investigate who actually lives at each address in any great detail?

You can partially sell a house. Provided the net wealth is high enough there is always a solution.

Tax based on occupants, that is getting back to poll tax. It won't end well and will be difficult and costly to administer as you point out. It's not going to happen as last time it was attempted there were riots in the streets and it ended Thatcher.

I guess there is a finite chance it could happen in the future under a Tory government. Under Labour ? No way.

@keeppumping

"It should be based on the services you use not on house valuations. "

Yes, I can see you don't approve of a property tax based on the valuation of the homes you own.

A poll tax would bear most heavily on the poor, and most lightly on the rich.

Even more so than our current unreformed Council Tax system.

"and will be difficult and costly to administer"
Just make it part of a digital ID, you need the ID to be employed and there is a "working adult CT rate" deducted from earnings at the payroll stage and sent to the council, it would make the overall burden of council tax on individuals cheaper?

Are you thinking that only employed people would pay the poll tax?

I would have hoped they would sort out valuations first otherwise it will just entrench the geographical inequality. House in band G in the north worth £500-£600k. House in Band G in London could be worth at least 5 times that.

I'm struggling to make heads or tails of this, I'm afraid @DrPrunesqualer

Exactly. You would certainly hope so as that would be the logical and sensible thing to do. It probably means that they won't though!

a very good friend of mine has a band G property , it’s a 4 bed detached with garage , so granted a nice size property but it’s not Buckingham palace !

Presumably Digital IT will be all the more important when claiming benefits and therefore everything will be linked
I’m quite excited at the prospect of it actually working. We all know it probably won’t but the idea of it is good.

Hello Straw Man!

“Everyone already lives somewhere, so supply can’t be the issue”

The fact is and it is a fact, not an opinion, the UK has failed to build enough homes for decades. Another fact: people’s living circumstances constantly change. Adult children trying to leave home, couples separating, families relocating, older people wanting to downsize,
people leaving HMOs. students moving for university. I mean yeah, they all technically “live somewhere” right now, but it’s not where they need or want to be or even can remain.

Taxing people’s homes isn’t going to magic new housing stock into existence, nor is it going to free up the right types of homes in the right places. It just punishes people for government and industry created problems while doing absolutely nothing to fix the underlying problem.

as @DrPrunesqualer said It’s not a special entitlement. Its a home.

A property sales tax is not going to encourage people to downsize, it might even put people off of upsizing. Most people moving up in house size depend on HPI to offset the cost.