Council Tax

graham17_2

Hey all,

Not sure if this is the best forum to put this in. Sorry if it's not.

We bought and moved into our first house in November 2009 in Glasgow, Scotland.

When I called up to register us for paying council tax, he told me the band rating and we then started paying the required amount.

I just got a letter through yesterday saying that once the house was up for sale, and before we moved in, the valuation authority for my local council valued the house. Apparently this is common practice when selling a house so that they can review the banding.

So it turns out that since the previous owners build an extension (a loft conversion), the house value would therefore be more than when they originally sorted the banding. So they have advised me that we are now one band higher.

The letter then went on to say that they will notify the finance director at the local council office who deals with the collection of council tax. This is just direct debit for us.

Obviously we'll need to start paying slightly more council tax per year. Tbh, it isn't exactly a massive amount over the course of a year. But the thing I was worried about was would they backdate the payments, so we'd owe them the difference for the last 8 months or so? Or would we just start paying the correct amount from now?

I'm expecting a letter soon from the finance section presumably detailing what the new payments will be.

Basically I just wanted to know my position if they ask for back dated payments. Firstly, would they expect these as a one off payment, or would my monthly payment be upped for the rest of the year to compensate for the new amount, as well as back-dated payments?

Also, my main question is about my position as to whether we need to pay the back dated payments. Is there no arguing it, i.e. we'd just have to pay it? Or could it be argued that since they've only just told us now, 8months after buying it, that we shouldn't have to pay the difference for the past 8 months?

Obviously when we budgeted and paid council tax, we assumed the banding was correct. I've roughly calculated that we will owe them between £80 and £100 if they want us to make up the difference for the past 8 months. We don't necessarily have this money lying around since we assumed they had the band correct when we moved in.

So I just want to know where we stand in advance of receiving this later in case they want us to make up the difference.

Thanks,

Graham.

BitterAndTwisted

They'll most probably back-date it but the monies owed are in two different Council Tax years so I expect they'll demand the underpaid amount from Nov 09 to March 10 by return but send you a new Council Tax demand for the current year and expect you to make up the shortfall by increasing your monthly payments between now and January 2011

CIS

You will be liable for the full backdated amount.

The vast majority of the time in cases like this we will split the amount created by the band increase alongside the current years charge of if, it is a substantial amount, we tend to allow some of it to be spread over in to the next year.

The only way to find out is to ask the local authority in question and see what they will offer.