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?

The Chelsea flat is actually a great example of misleading the argument. That flat’s band G tax is only £217 a month including precepts. Far lower than my band E Somerset home despite it being worth nearly £2m compared to my £400k home.

We are missing that a band G in London is a lot cheaper than a band G elsewhere in the country in terms of council tax.

My 3 bed house with a tiny one bed annexe in Scotland is band G, definitely not a mansion in any way.

There is a hidden housing issue with families stuck in first time buyer homes unable to move up the ladder because for many years developers only built first time buyer homes or large executive properties. Coupled with families unable to staircase from the second tier to the third tier homes and pensioners downsizing to second tier properties it's created an issue that has been identified by multiple housing experts and political advisers.

This effective shortage of second tier homes to meet demand has distorted property prices in this middle of the market where you have many of the most stretched families of working age.

Making it less attractive to staircase and unaffordable for pensioners to live in larger properties would further distort the market. I can reasonably see in some places a small third bed semi ending up MORE expensive than a large four bed detached for this reason!

People caught out wouldn't necessarily be able to downsize because of this change in demand and would leave them exceptionally vulnerable to effectively being insolvent and having the choice of defaulting on a mortgage or being unable to eat or heat a house because they'd be unable to sell up.

You'd also make it EVEN harder for couples and those who have just had their first child to move up to second tier homes. They will be least able to compete for second tier homes compared with pensioners who have paid off the mortgage and can buy outright.

It's a truly absurd idea which fails to understand the current issues and problems within the market.

Editted for error.

The band system needs updating. We cannot continue with a system based on property valuations in 1991.

My house in Somerset is Band G valued at about 750k. Another house in the village is on the market for 2.95million also Band G. Makes no sense.

Band G here although the place is worth well under a million. The council do fuck all as it is so if they double council tax (and go to a 4 day week) it's just going to rub more piss into the festering open wound that is council tax.

The worst thing is Supreme Economist Reeves will be back for more next year and the one after.

Agreed. Ours have been clawing back bin collections and charging for green waste bins now (on top of our £394/mo bill for a terraced 4-bed home). And have reduced non-recyclable waste collections to once every 3 weeks. It’s a joke.

They started charging for the green bins here this year so DH looked at the cost per bin and realised we could get an incinerator for half the price.

He burns the lot now and really enjoys it. I make him undress outside after a burn, his overall goes straight in the wash and he to the shower immediately.

How have you come to this conclusion?

Most common types of housing by type

• Semi-detached: The most common type overall, making up 30.6% of homes in England.
• Terraced: The second most common type, making up about 23.2% of all households.
• Detached: The third most popular type, with 23.2% of households living in detached properties.
• Flats: These are the least common type of house in England, though they are the most common type of housing in London.

https://www.andrewspropertygroup.co.uk/market-insight/whats-the-most-popular-type-of-property/

Because there's been whole articles about it...

Maybe Google about it.

No need to be so fucking rude, I did “Google” learn to read.

O wow ,we are band c ,small 2 bed flat and pay £230,ridiculous.

I wish all this news speculation of the budget will stop. It's just worrying everyone.

Where am I there are some homes in E, F and Gs and there is hardly much between them. I can understand how they need to expand an H, because surely some homes in an H shouldn't be paying the same as a stately home or mansion, that only also pay H council tax.

If they doubled ours for example, I'd be challenging the band as there isn't much between bands where I am and sometimes lower banded properties sell for more than a higher banded house, so it doesn't make sense.

It might also be easy to upgrade, in band terms, those houses that are extended
People need building regs approval which could be passed on to Landreg and councils and the bands increased.

Increasing the top 5% of houses in an area could mean semis all get increased ie standard family homes. Not all areas have mansions

Increasing across the board is more equal with
increasing bands for properties extended
and
perhaps having more bands within the H band

not many properties are downbanded. You need reasons to justify it such as
the size of your property has reduced since its first valuation in 1991 ( ours for example was accepted only because our overall property size reduced )

You run a small risk of your property increasing by a band

I'm so bloody cross about this and just don't know where the money will come from. Hopefully it's one of those stupid leaks they put to the press to test the water. Either way there's going to be something to clobber the middle classes who are already clobbered enough.

What I’m saying is ‘she might need to revise her wish list’ people compromise on location/ garden direction / off road parking etc. she cannot afford what she currently looking for - so needs to do what everyone else does who is living beyond their means. Make choices.
there are abundant threads on here that people sacrifice a home office/ a spare reception / a dining room because they can’t get exactly what they want, where they want it in their price range. She doesn’t need to be close to work or schools. What’s so special about this specific group of people that they can only have exactly what they want?

I can see why they’ve considered taxing housing as the most obvious asset. But council tax is supposed to be for council services and there’s no evidence that expensive areas use more services. Rather the opposite.

The current system already takes from expensive areas and gives to the poor. Otherwise Richmond would have gold plated dustbins and Blackpool would have none.

What would be a fairer way to tax houses as an asset? There is already stamp duty at time of purchase. Any system needs to factor in the house as an asset in comparison with local prices. So if you’re in a house that’s 3x local average in Hounslow you pay the same premium as someone with that type of property in Rotherham. The Hounslow people don’t have a choice to spend less than £600k on a family house.

The % of income for city of London is an outlier. It’s a weird demographic there.

Exactly! And this doubling of bands G and H will do nothing to change that. It will still mean that seriously wealthy people in London are getting off scott free, whilst others are likely going to struggle to pay double. It doesn't matter that the 1 bed flat in Chelsea is very small (and probably shouldn't attract a band G rating) but it does matter that the person who bought it could afford to shell out £2m for the privilege. Labour are shielding real wealth if they push the button on this one and expecting ordinary people with more modest incomes to pick up the slack .

Council tax banding is a great way of implementing a property tax. The mechanism is already there to collect the tax. Just an extra line item on the council tax bill that the councils collect and send through to the government. No one can claim the usual, which is that it would cost more to collect than it actually raises.

However the bands could do with some revision for this purpose, certainly the resolution in the highest band is not enough.

I think they should phase it in gradually, with probably a fixed levy to go for the government from each of the higher bands - say £250 from D, £500 from E, £1000 from F etc. It probably needs to be phased in in stages to let the market adjust, so maybe at 25% each year of the final rate over a four year process.

Just saying double it on G and H just creates another cliff edge which is what everyone is trying to avoid.

Oh and they need to redo the banding, probably starting with adding in extra bands above H before working on the lower stuff.

But Rachel has said in her speech today
everyone is equal and
that we will all need to contribute

so that means everyone will be paying the same increases irrespective of banding
Equal doesn't mean just those in the higher bands pay a higher % than those in the lower. That’s not equal.

Or was she lying 🤥

Some of us are obviously more equal than others when it comes to paying

But which band is their property in?

I’m in a London borough, looking at the council website for mine and each of the neighbouring boroughs the council tax at band E averages around about the £300 a month you are paying - some a little more or a little less.

Either your in-laws are in a low charging council area or they are a lower banded house.

Well that would probably be going back to the poll tax.

Which didn't work out that well IIRC - the idea was everyone paid the same.

There are maybe some options that the government could adopt in the longer term, like payment based on sqr ft of land. That way everyone could be equal in the respect they pay the same per sqr ft that they own, and if they want to own more they pay more.

But I think a property tax in this country is long overdue. It's something that happens in many other countries and is a good way of raising money as it is hard to hide/uproot property. I just think it ought to be staged in implementation to allow the market to adjust.

I don't really buy the "all my money is in assets therefore I shouldn't be taxed" argument. This has massively distorted the flow of money into various assets and priced a lot of housing out of peoples range.

You both missing the fact that Chelsea and Westminster and one or two other central boroughs are complete anomalies due to the proportion of business vs residential properties, density of residential properties and foreign ownership.

Most London boroughs are at the higher end and more like the 300 per month at band E. Variation will come sometimes from the level of need in a borough and past spending decisions. Density of population will also affect the cost per head.