The dreaded Council Tax

margaretclare

lodestoneman wrote:

Specially when you consider these people living in a feather bedded lap of luxury legally thieved from penniless old ladies who are threatened with jail or bankruptcy if they can't pay.

A small handful have gone to jail over the past couple of years or so - the man who went to jail most recently was making a protest, it wasn't the case that he couldn't pay, he refused to.

I still think that if the 'penniless old ladies' are really 'penniless' then they will be receiving Pension Credit, which, AFAIK, carries with it Council Tax Benefit and Housing Benefit if they're paying rent. Elmer will no doubt be able to tell us if that is the case.

Margaret

elmer

Sadly Margaret Clare the penniless old ladies are receiving Pension Credit and Council Tax Benefit, and in many cases they are still penniless. I do think the whole of local government funding needs an overhaul, however how we would do that eludes me a well as many others. CT for many of my pensioners can take up to 25% of their income, and thats not right .

Elmer

jennifernil

I think that saying pensioners in larger houses have the choice to downsize and save money is a little misleading.
We will be pensioners in 8 months time. We have a large house which we designed and built 19 years ago, at that time my Mother and our 2 children were also here, now there is just our youngest who is at Uni and will need to be supported by us for 2 years yet.
We like the area we live in, we have friends here, family not too far away. We like our house, after all we designed it the way we wanted it. It is well built, well insulated and we know how it all works.
Being in a good area it is worth a bit, possibly £500000, the council tax (including water as we are in Scotland) this year is £2950. If we were to downsize to say a 3 bed bungalow (we still need a room for the daughter) it would still cost over £250000 here, probably more like £300000 so we are in 3% stamp duty, that's £7500 - £9000 to the taxman. Then what about agents' and solicitors' fees? To sell and buy, maybe £10000. Then there is the removers, another £2000 maybe?
So that is over £20000 already. All "wasted" money.
Then the "new" house might need a bit doing , yet another cost.It might not be as well insulated so there may be no saving on fuel bills. (ours are low)
So how much are we going to save on our Council Tax? No more than £1500 per annum, probably less. So it would be at least 13 years before we had saved what it cost us to move.
So now we have maybe an extra £200000 in the bank earning say 5% less tax, so 4% nett , an extra £8000 if we save it. But that could have been an extra £230000 still in the property and probably appreciating at more than 4%. So that does not seem particularly attractive.
So it seems whatever we do we lose out.
We have no intention of staying in this house forever, but at the moment we are fit enough to be able to and would like to enjoy it, be able to have family come to stay etc. That is our choice. It should be our choice to move when we want to, not to have to because of a tax.
We don't mind (well not too much!!!) paying our income tax, but why should we have to pay so much "local tax" because we chose to spend our time and income on providing a nice place for our children to grow up and a comfortable home for my Mother to end her days in, rather than frittering it away on fancy holidays, flashy cars etc?

Sorry, for going on , but I do feel quite strongly about this!!!

Mike_S_8

jennifernil wrote:

So it seems whatever we do we lose out.

We don't mind (well not too much!!!) paying our income tax, but why should we have to pay so much "local tax" because we chose to spend our time and income on providing a nice place for our children to grow up and a comfortable home for my Mother to end her days in, rather than frittering it away on fancy holidays, flashy cars etc?

SPOT-ON. The majority are slowly, but surely, being driven into penury. This thieving govt. will take whatever it can, by whatever method it can, from whomever it can. (Donors to the Party excepted!)

seven-day-weekend

elmer wrote:

Sadly Margaret Clare the penniless old ladies are receiving Pension Credit and Council Tax Benefit, and in many cases they are still penniless. I do think the whole of local government funding needs an overhaul, however how we would do that eludes me a well as many others. CT for many of my pensioners can take up to 25% of their income, and thats not right .

Elmer

If they are receiving full Council Tax Benefit, it does not take ANY of their income.

I agree though, that if they are just over the threshold (either with savings or income) to receive benefit, it can take a huge chunk of their income.

It should be based on ability to pay and everybody should pay something, IMHO.

seven-day-weekend

Mike_S wrote:

SPOT-ON. This thieving govt. will take whatever it can, by whatever method it can, from whomever it can. (Donors to the Party excepted!)

Even donors to the party have to pay Council Tax!

elmer

If they are receiving full Council Tax Benefit, it does not take ANY of their income.

Here in Scotland we collect Water & sewerage charges as well which amount to approx 20% of the total bill, so although those on benefit dont actually pay us any Council Tax, they do have to pay us something every month, the minimum is currently about £20.00 per month.
For those that dont qualify the minimum Council Tax here is £100.00 per month, which I think is too much for anyone to be paying for local services.

By the way the highest is £280.00, which probaly equates to another lot of income tax every month for an average wage. There has to be a fairer way, as someone has pointed out earlier, we are collecting and administering this, and that alone is a massive cost.

Elmer

seven-day-weekend

Ooooh, that is high, Elmer!

£280 pcm is as much as some mortgages/rents!

My CT and water rates for my house in the UK is just over £1000 a year. (I'm in Band A, the lowest, for CT).

jennifernil

Our student daughter shares a very small 3 bed flat near the Uni in Glasgow, luckily she does not have to pay the CT as it is band E and around £2000 per annum! I think Glasgow must be the highest in Scotland.
So she will not be able to afford to stay on there once she graduates.........hence the reason we need to keep a room for her!
Our CT is more than our mortgage.

lodestoneman

Quote:
Originally posted by margaretclare:

if a person has £16,000 in savings, in a half-decent account where it might earn, say, 5%, that will bring in £800 at simple interest, and this £800 will go a long way to paying the council tax. Ours is just short of £1200, so £800 is 2/3rds of the year's council tax.

Yes, first of all Margaret may I thank you for your thoughtful replies, and while what you say is perfectly true (to a point), this year at least. But what you don't take into account is that the first 3% (at the moment!) of nett interest in a "half decent account" does nothing more than maintain the value of your capital against inflation, and I do question your 5%(nett) when the best I've been able to find is 4%. Nevertheless I do conceed that does leave you with the remaining 1%, which (at the moment at least) obviously contributes £160 towards your £1200 council tax bill. But it's not the immediate 'ability to pay' which worries people is it? What worries people is the endless year-on-year inflation busting council tax rises which are outstripping their incomes.

OK Margaret you say :

A small handful have gone to jail over the past couple of years or so - the man who went to jail most recently was making a protest, it wasn't the case that he couldn't pay, he refused to.

The retired Reverend James Ridley is a peaceable man of the church, and a second world war vetaren, and no Margaret, he didn't refuse to pay council tax, what he was jailed for was because he refused to pay any increase in council tax which exceeded inflation. In short he was sentenced to 28 days for refusing to pay the extra £50 or so. How do you reconcile that with a recent case of a murderer given a life sentence and released after serving only 6 years? Clearly our jails don't have the capacity to house the criminals who should be there, so how did they find space for this feebled aged Rev. James Riddley who only allegedly refused to pay the extra fifty quid? How much did it cost the taxpayer to hold this desperate culprit, the Rev. James Riddley captive for 28 days? Obviously many times more than the extra fifty quid he quite rightly refused to pay.

Obviously it's nothing at all to do with 'justice' is it? Instead, the Rev. James Riddley stands as a stark reminder of what will happen to the rest of us if we refuse to comply.

OK Margaret you say :

I still think that if the 'penniless old ladies' are really 'penniless' then they will be receiving Pension Credit, which, AFAIK, carries with it Council Tax Benefit and Housing Benefit if they're paying rent.

Yes, but not if their meagre life savings amount to no more than the price of a pretty indifferent family car (£ 16,000), which still leaves them liable to the full amount, regardless of their penuarary circumsrances. I really don't think that you Margaret will see that as "justice".

I also quote elmer, herself a Public Employee :

We also work in Council Tax, which I agree is a very unfair system, but which we take a serious amount of hassle for on a daily basis,

It's up to you Margaret, where do you see yourself in all this? Are you satisfied with what they are doing to you? I end with quoting Angela Wales : The Council Tax system plays on 'words' and 'words' are deliberately used to stop any defence to any summons and hearing.

I quote:

You are hereby summoned to appear before the Magistrates Court etc etc etc to answer to a complaint that you are the person properly liable to pay Council Tax and that the said sum shown below has not been paid in respect of the Tax set by the Council.

Well obviously you answer that the above is correct as it is true.

End of case.You fell into their trap.

Liability order granted and end of story - no defence.

I noted the last time I tried to defend my case with specific legisaltion and a strong defence they very carefully stuck rigidly to a few sentences you couldnt expand on or argue with.

e.g Do you accept this is the rate set by this Local Authority under regulation blah blah blah?

Well... yes. ( you cant argue with it as it is fact)

And so you fall deeper and deeper into their trap.

We need to see if we can play the 'word' games back if we are to succeed in this kangaroo court system.

Very crafty and very slippery arent they?

Remember it is all in the WORDS and the way they are used against you.
_________________
Angela - Wales Campaign

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Taxation: how the sheep are shorn.

Edward Abbey