Council Tax - whats yours and do you think it a good system?

geewhiz

treliac wrote: »

Why don't you challenge your banding? There's information on this on the site.

Thanks, I will have a look although I think ours might be right and they are just paying less than they should be.

Andy_L

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

You seem to miss the point. The justification for 'gold-plated' pensions was to compensate for lower salaries generally associated with 'public service'.

That is manifestly not the case now for a large number of public sector jobs and consequently they should be discontinued in the current format.

Pensions should now be moved to DC schemes (with all existing accrued benefits preserved). In that way, everone would have an interest in ensuring that the economy was run efficiently and private sector 'fat cats' and government policy-makers were be accountable to the country at large .

nb superficial wage comparisons between state vs public school teachers are totally inappropriate unless you factor in the differing job requirements, standards expected and job availability. Re. NHS vs private - private income is paid for by taxpayer and controlled by gov't - hence it's pseudo public sector anyway!

I fully understand the point that, looking at the whole renumeration package (pay, pension contributions, holiday, bonuses, share options, company car etc etc), that a public sector worker may be better rewarded than theit private sector counterpart. What I dont accept is that I have to accept it as true without seeing any statistitically valid analysis that backs it up but just because people loudly & repeatedly state it as a "fact"

I do agree that the DB schemes should move to DC for future accrual - you do however realise that in the short-medium term that means, for the unfunded schemes, doubling(ish) the annual costs as the current budgeted employers contributions will have to be invested instead of being used to pay the pensions of the currently retired. Since thats politically "undo-able" I suspect instead salami-slicing of benefits and increasing employee contributions

PrivatisetheNHSnow

Why not revolt against council taxes and other leftist attempts to impose serfdom?

From Watt Tyler to the poll tax, revolt is the only way to stop the left-wing confiscation of wealth

Old_Slaphead

Andy_L wrote: »

I do agree that the DB schemes should move to DC for future accrual - you do however realise that in the short-medium term that means, for the unfunded schemes, doubling(ish) the annual costs as the current budgeted employers contributions will have to be invested instead of being used to pay the pensions of the currently retired. Since thats politically "undo-able" I suspect instead salami-slicing of benefits and increasing employee contributions

I agree with your conclusion thet the way forward will be a slow and stealthy attrition of all public sector pension benefits probably catalysed by the 2010 LGPS funding review.

As regards the doubling of annual costs that will only affect funded schemes - the fact that the unfunded schemes will now require an immediate and ongoing employer contributions too can only be good to obviate some of the liabilities from future generations. As you say, given current pressures on budgets. it is almost certainly politically 'undo-able'

Andy_L

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

As regards the doubling of annual costs that will only affect funded schemes - the fact that the unfunded schemes will now require an immediate and ongoing employer contributions too can only be good to obviate some of the liabilities from future generations. As you say, given current pressures on budgets. it is almost certainly politically 'undo-able'

Its the other way round.
The funded schemes can move to future DC benefits with their employers contributions and only have to deal with underfunding of acrued benefits.

The unfunded schems already make employers contributions based on a 5? yearly analysis of past stockmarket performance, longevity etc in order to make department aware of the true(ish) cost of their staff (without this they might think, eg, its cheaper to employ more staff rather then upgrade machinery).
However, like the state pension & NI, that money is used to pay current pensioners (rather than being invested) and any surplus/shortfall goes into/comes out of "the big treasury pot"

If they move to DC they still need to pay those pensions out of the contributions and pay DC employers contributions (and I suspose S2P since they'll no longer be notionally contracted out?). Obviously the exact increase depends on a whole host of details like the ratio of retired to active members & the contribution rate of the new DC scheme