Can you 'whistleblow' an incorrect council tax band (neighbours)

keith969

JJG wrote: »

The below paragraph is on my councils council tax website.

Bands shown do not include the effect on value of alterations or improvements carried out by the current owners.
Only when a house is sold will they be taken into account and from the date of sale.

It can take a while, the house I bought was extended by the previous but one owners in 1998. It was only in 2010, some six months or so after I bought it, that it was rebanded.

p00hsticks

cjdavies wrote: »

The only that need changing is the 25% for single occupants, should be 50%

What is your justification for this ?

Although some seervices provided by council tax are used by individuals (or not at all) - for example, libraries and schools - other costs are per household regardless of the number of people in that household

It costs the same to empty a bin for a house with one occupant as it does one with two or more occupants.

The cost of providing street lighting for a road is not dependant on how many occupants each house has

It costs the same for the fire brigade to attend a house fire or the police to attend a robbery at a house regardless of the number of occupants...

I'm old enough to remember when they tried to impose a 'community charge' (aka 'poll tax') on all adults, and the rioting in the streets that happened as a result .....

moneyistooshorttomention

Ah...but then single people households don't need as much rubbish collected as couples (or, even more so, families). There is the little matter of the rubbish has to be not just collected - but taken to tip/recycled/etc.

Community facilities are doubtless required by families that arent required by single people.

....and some of us didn't oppose the Poll Tax. Au contraire - I certainly fully agreed with it actually and, despite spending a noticeable proportion of my younger days as an activist, I refused to campaign against personally as it made sense to me:)

CIS

For reference - the reason the discount for single occupancy is 25% is that the original concept of council tax was that it would be made of two componentsm 50% for the property and 50% for the occupiers (with a default assumption of 2 occs). Clearly in this case with one occupier they pay the 50% property side + half of the person side (i.e. 25%) so overall it's 75%.

Craig

booksurr

p00hsticks wrote: »

It costs the same to empty a bin for a house with one occupant as it does one with two or more occupants.

one could classify every local govt service as either a fixed cost basis irrespective of number of service consumers, or variable cost basis reflecting number of consumers.

Refuse collection is a variable cost. Less waste is produced by one person, so a given dustcart could cover a much larger round as it would take longer to become full, meaning fewer dustcarts and dustmen are required to provide the same frequency of service. QED single people are cheaper.

However, as you so well demonstrate, there are of course plenty of examples where the converse applies...

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Ah...but then single people households don't need as much rubbish collected as couples (or, even more so, families). There is the little matter of the rubbish has to be not just collected - but taken to tip/recycled/etc.

Community facilities are doubtless required by families that arent required by single people.

....and some of us didn't oppose the Poll Tax. Au contraire - I certainly fully agreed with it actually and, despite spending a noticeable proportion of my younger days as an activist, I refused to campaign against personally as it made sense to me:)

wholeheartedly agree.

poll tax was a very fair way of funding local government. The more people there are the more services they consume and should therefore pay towards funding, but of course such radical ideas upset those who believe that only "the rich" should pay for "the poor" and that paying your way through life is "unfair"

moneyistooshorttomention

CIS wrote: »

For reference - the reason the discount for single occupancy is 25% is that the original concept of council tax was that it would be made of two componentsm 50% for the property and 50% for the occupiers (with a default assumption of 2 occs). Clearly in this case with one occupier they pay the 50% property side + half of the person side (i.e. 25%) so overall it's 75%.

Craig

Of course we all know that that is a fancy form of wording/the justification as to why single people are penalised. They could have used some other way of working it out - but chose not to.

It doesn't excuse the unfairness of that method.

I never did know though why the idea of "local income tax" never got introduced as the successor to rates. Wonders ruefully whether my own "local income tax" would now be set at a much lower rate than it was before I moved here - as I'm getting a LOT LOT less for my Council Tax than I used to be (misses all my free community events and the way one could rely on Council maintenance work being done promptly.....).

Miss_Samantha

I don't think that single people are penalised with 'only' a 25% discount.

The explanation given by CIS makes sense. For councils the mere existence of the property creates a bunch of fixed costs: Roads, public lighting, trash collection lorries, etc.

I suspect that, for councils, the difference between one and two occupiers is small.

Missus_Hyde

Sillychuckie wrote: »

A house around the corner from us was raised to the ground and rebuilt a few years ago. It is now a stunning house (one of the best on the street).

Oddly, it still has the lowest council tax banding of all the properties on the street (it stands out like a sore thumb, with 98% of the houses being in band G, but theirs is in band F, lower). Even more odd, the banding website doesn't show an "Improvement Indicator" against the property.

I just happened to stumble across this whilst browsing the bands in our area, but it is clearly wrong and unfair.

I can't challenge my own band (which is probably fair and accurate), but is there a way to tell the council about this other property? I guess I could query my own band, using theirs as reference, but it seems a round-a-bout way of reporting it.

SC.

Thank goodness you're not my neighbour, with that spiteful and jealous attitude!!:eek:

moneyistooshorttomention

I think most of us have agreed on that.

Best attitude to neighbours imo is "Let sleeping dogs lie" and "I dont bother you = then you dont bother me"

If neighbours are presenting a problem, eg trying to nick a bit of your land/disturbing your "peace and quiet"/ letting JK grow in the garden etc then deal with it with a very firm hand. Otherwise just "live and let live".

It's a bonus if one can get a good neighbour - but, if they are at least "behaving themselves" then leave well be.

Waterlily24

We didn't quite do the same to our house, it was just a few walls left standing so not a complete demolition. We've done a big extension was 4 rooms plus kitchen and bathroom it's now 7 rooms plus 3 bathrooms, kitchen and large utility and we pay no more than we did. We were told that they re-assess when the next person moves in.