The dreaded Council Tax

lodestoneman

seven-day-weekend wrote:

I didn't say someone who didn't pay income tax should pay a third of their income in CT, I said they should pay SOMETHING.

Sorry seven-day-week. I still maintain that anyone too poor to pay income tax is too poor to pay council tax.

margaretclare

lodestoneman wrote:

Sorry seven-day-week. I still maintain that anyone too poor to pay income tax is too poor to pay council tax.

But they don't, though, do they? Anyone below income tax level will fall within means-tested benefits level and that brings them into Council Tax Benefit - or have I got it wrong?

Margaret

seven-day-weekend

As far as I am concerned, we all receive the services, therefore we all should pay something. (Not necesssarily all the same).

Why should people who pay a fair whack of income tax already have to then pay yet more??? They don't get their bins emptied twice as much, or their roads swept more often?

A poll tax based on ability to pay is my chosen vehicle for local taxes.

seven-day-weekend

margaretclare wrote:

But they don't, though, do they? Anyone below income tax level will fall within means-tested benefits level and that brings them into Council Tax Benefit - or have I got it wrong?

Margaret

Unless they have savings.

Mike_S_8

ManAtHome wrote:

But what you replace it with? Whatever scheme is dreamt up for any form of taxation, it will always be unfair to some (if not most) of the population.

So - it's a matter of choosing the least unfair solution. I would tend to agree that the Poll Tax had the makings of a fairer system - except that it didn't take any real account of ability to pay. What also helped to kill it was that many who used local services, but had never contributed to their cost, got up in arms when they were asked to cough up.

CT is the same. Many people who use the services could afford to pay something, but currently don't.

If everyone who could afford to contribute (even a minimal amount) did so, the load would be spread more thinly and more fairly. And, collecting it through a small increase in Income Tax seems, to me, to be the fairest and lowest-cost solution. (It would be even fairer to do it via IT if Grabber Brown hadn't done away with the married couples' allowance and MIRAS (Mortgage Interest Relief At Source) and whatever other reliefs he has ditched.

Discuss.

CIS

Do away with the current exemptions on the system and they could afford to drop the council tax - today alone, I must have given around £20-30K worth of Class N exemptions (students), and most normal days I probably end up awarding around £5-10K worth of Class C (empty property) exemptions and furnished let discounts (10% off) to landlords.

An awful lot of the time the people we have trouble getting money off are the rich ones (apparently certain footballers are well known for trying not to pay), peole living in million £ houses claiming they cant afford to pay their council tax...

Charis

Just checked on my transnational region. I am in the Atlantic region, Like about half of mainland Britain and the whole of Ireland apparently, although we are nowhere near the sea. The north of Scotland appears in no less than four transnational regions. More of our money down the drain.

Charis

lodestoneman

margaretclare wrote:

But they don't, though, do they? Anyone below income tax level will fall within means-tested benefits level and that brings them into Council Tax Benefit - or have I got it wrong?

No Margaret, you haven't got it wrong, in principle at least. But the fact remains that Council Tax Benefit is not available to anyone whose whole life savings amount to no more than the price of a pretty mediocre family car (£16,000). If you can't afford to pay it out of income and your savings are more than this you will have to pay it out of savings until they've reduced yur savings to £16,000. Only THEN can you get CT Benefit.

But it gets worse. Currently under consideration (by Sir Michael Lyons) is what is known as 'deferment'. This will mean that if you own (any part of) your own home but don't have the income to pay Council Tax you will be able to opt instead to allow the council to make a charge against the value of your home when you die. The annually applied charges will of course carry compounded interest, so if for example you retire at 60 and die 25 years later (age 85) it can be shown that by that time the council will legally own 25% of the then value of your home. This is of course in addition to the 40% inheritance tax the Government will take.

However, since most people's estate is largely tied up in the value of their property, and since the average house price is below the threshold for CGT, it follows that most people wont pay much in capital gains. But no such safeguards apply to council tax. So it will not be Government but the council which will get the lion's share of the cake, and all because your income was too small to pay either income tax or council tax.

I really can't think there is anybody in the land who would support that as a fair and just system.

ManAtHome

Mike_S wrote:

CT is the same. Many people who use the services could afford to pay something, but currently don't.

If everyone who could afford to contribute (even a minimal amount) did so, the load would be spread more thinly and more fairly.

Quite right - unfortunately it seems like we're going to be stuck with the exemptions for some time (as you said on your comment on poll tax). This doesn't help with the real enemy... waste - if you're not paying for it, you're not going to be too bothered about voting it out.

Re-distributing the burden is really just re-arranging the deck chairs...

Mike_S_8

CIS wrote:

An awful lot of the time the people we have trouble getting money off are the rich ones (apparently certain footballers are well known for trying not to pay), peole living in million £ houses claiming they cant afford to pay their council tax...

What you say reminds me of what some snotty Chief Financial Officer at one company I worked for used to parrot:

"The Golden Rule is - He who has the Gold makes the Rules."

The sad thing is that what this prat said is true.