Stalling the council tax

dag_2

Recently, there's been a lot in the press about how much credit card companies profit from late payment charges.

BT has also been in the news, for late penalty charges on phone bills.

I had my first ever credit card late penalty charge in 1996 - and since then, I've assumed that everyone charges late penalties. So the recent news didn't really surprise me.

It's only just dawned on me that local authorities don't charge late penalties for your council tax in the same way. Can someone check that I've got this right? Thanks.

I've recently started working for the NHS. So my council tax benefit has been reassessed, resulting in a council tax bill of several hundred pounds. The bill made out that I was already in arrears on my instalments, and must pay immediately. I thought, "scuse me?" I can't possibly be in arrears if I was never given normal notice to pay the bill in the first place. So I decided to take the bill with a bit of a pinch of salt.

I don't dispute the amount - I just dispute the due date. I don't see how they can possibly enforce it legally. I'm paying interest elsewhere, so I don't plan to pay my council tax any earlier than is strictly necessary.

Anyway ....





I've read up about this. If you have an arrangement to pay council tax by instalments, but don't pay an instalment - but haven't missed any instalments earlier in the same year - the council will send you a reminder. If you don't pay the instalment arrears within seven days of the reminder, you lose the right to pay by instalments, and must pay the full year's council tax.

If you don't pay the full council tax within another seven days - fourteen days in total - then you will get a summons, and "summons costs" will be added to your council tax.

The actual summons could be anything between £10 and £100 - it varies depending on where you live. However, it's fixed for each local authority area, and it doesn't depend on how much council tax you owe. So if you owe a very large amount of council tax, then it might be cheaper to get a summons than borrow elsewhere to pay it off.

Can anyone check that I've understood this correctly? Thanks.

I have set up a direct debit to pay my council tax, but despite the bills, they've only bothered collecting payment once, and that was in October 2004. Although they say I'm in arrears, they haven't sent me anything which says "reminder" on it.

If it was nearer the beginning of the year, I might be worried about losing the right to pay by instalments. But since they only planned two more instalments anyway, I'm not that fussed.

Any advice? Thanks.