council tax revaluation

Becles

Milky_Mocha wrote:

I must say the thought of being charged this "local income tax" irritates me even more. "Fairer tax" huh?

There's two sides to every story.

In my street, a single working mother who claims child benefit and some tax credits is currently struggling to pay her council tax which is nearly 9% of her take home pay even with her 25% single occupant discount.

A house a few doors away has a couple that both work full time. They have 2 adult children who also work full time. I'm sure they are paying a lot less than 9% of their household income on Council Tax.

Is that fair?

dunstonh

There's two sides to every story.

In my street, a single working mother who claims child benefit and some tax credits is currently struggling to pay her council tax which is nearly 9% of her take home pay even with her 25% single occupant discount.

A house a few doors away has a couple that both work full time. They have 2 adult children who also work full time. I'm sure they are paying a lot less than 9% of their household income on Council Tax.

Is that fair?

Their outgoings are also going to be a lot higher than the single mum. So why should they be penalised.

Quite possibly, at the end of the day, they both end up with the same disposable income.

MarkyMarkD

Personally I think that the original community charge (aka Poll Tax) was a reasonable solution for the reasons alluded to above, and a modified version of it (with appropriate rebates for the poor) would be far fairer than the current situation. But I'm sure that many people disagree.

waterbaby

How do they actually revalue houses then? Do they visit each house? That would be an insanely big task - but it's going to be very crude if they don't.

Joe_Bloggs

As far as I can tell the review will be said to be from April 1st 2005 and take two years to complete. The good news is it won't be done by trained surveyors and clip boards but by inland revenue controlled computers. There are lots of online house purchase stats broken down by postcode for an inititial re-banding/reclassification of band values. You can appeal your banding and the banding information of any house plus appeals on it are available.

It is an unfair form of regressive taxation, rather like stamp duty, VAT and window tax. You can get 25% dicount for being single and 100% for being a student plus numerous other discounts. There is little help for the pensioners that are not claiming benefits.

Political expediency may well prevail as central government dictates, almost totally, how much should be spent from central grants and therefore how much should be raised locally.
The Lyons inquiry is slowly doing nothing, in the area of council tax, for a general election. http://www.lyonsinquiry.org/
J_B.

MarkyMarkD

I don't agree that it's regressive. You are taxed according to the value of your property. That's no more progressive or regressive than taxing according to the level of your income. Like I said before, release capital from your property if you don't have the income to live the lifestyle your property represents.

Joe_Bloggs

MarkyMarkD wrote:

I don't agree that it's regressive. You are taxed according to the value of your property. That's no more progressive or regressive than taxing according to the level of your income. Like I said before, release capital from your property if you don't have the income to live the lifestyle your property represents.

So this taxation method is perfect ?
J_B.