Bought house and Council Tax doubled.

dariune

Hi all

I bought a house which has a newly built small granny Annexe on the side. The planning permission specified it could be built as long as it was not rented out (But you could have a lodger).

When I was looking at buying the house it was Band D which equates to £1641.79 P/A

Concerned that the Annexe would cause problems I asked my County Council if I would have to pay Council Tax on the Annexe and they said no. I checked twice more with my County Council when speaking to them about other things and they said no.

I also phoned HMRC due to others issues with the Annexe and asked them about being charged Council Tax for the Annexe and they too said no.

So I bought the hosue and a few weeks after the purchase I got two Council Tax bills.

One Band E - £2006.63 P/A
One Band A - £1094.53 P/A

So after checking with the powers that be I have been lumbered with double the Council Tax than I was told.

I have appealed and been denied and it is now going to Tribunal.

Have I just been unlucky and need to suck it up? Have I been stupid?

Or do I have a case do you think? Obviously I can't prove what I was told on the phone and they refused to put it in writing.

I have checked the sale price for the hosue in 1991 and it was for £91,000 in 1998 and £85000 in 1994 so I guess that could be ambigous as to which band it should be in. The hosue next to mine has also just gone up to band e but none of the other identical houses in my street have. (Not sure I want to use that as an argument in-case I accidentally get all of their bands put up too)

The Annexe has no seperate entrance but it does have cooking facilities in the room (It isj ust a room with an onsuite shower room)

I have heard great things about this forum so I thought I would pose the question to you.

What are your thoughts? Appreciate any help you can offer even if it's just to tell me I am an idiot and I have no case.

Many thanks

xylophone

It has no independent access and is just a bedroom ( with cooker) and ensuite?

Why is it classified as an annexe rather than part of the main house?

D_M_E

Did the property have an Improvement Indicator against it for Council Tax?

If so, then I believe that this means that when it is sold its CT band is, as you have found, likely to be increased and this is probably why the tax has gone up.

BUT - you say it's been given 2 tax bands, one for the house and one for the annex.

If the annex is not separate from the house and can only be accessed through the main property then I believe that it should not be separately assessed for CT but it could push up the main property's CT band.

dariune

Im not sure why it is classified as an Annexe. To be honest it does look like an Annexe. That is why I tried so hard to find out about Council Tax.

Sorry I did mean the Distric Council not the County Council. (I deal with both for other reasons and some times forget which is which)

And it forget if it was the VOA department of HMRC but I think so because I specifically phoned them to ask about Annexes and the new Stamp Duty law that came in affect in the middle of my purchase of the house.

It has a cooker and a fridge so I appreciate that goes heavily against me.

I'm guessing there is no way I can use the fact that it was band D and I was told it wouldn't change and now it is band e and a? That is the approach I have been looking for but without proof of what they told me I'm not sure that will help.

I checked online both before and after the purchase and found contradictory information, some of which I can't find now.

I found .gov documentation stating that an Annexe required a seperrate entrance to be considered an Annexe. I also found documentation stating it didn't require a seperate entrance. (Which was sent to me by the VOA)

G_M

I suspect you have brought this upon yourself by repeatedly raising the question with the authorities.

Otherwise they would almost certainly not even considered the matter.

dariune

eggha wrote: »

the VOA makes the decisions and so it is the VOA guidance you need to use against them at the Tribunal if you want to win since they know the law as it is their job to do so...

The key bit from that link being this:
" The VOA is required by law to apply a separate Council Tax band to every: building, or part of a building, which has been constructed or adapted for use as separate living accommodation

The operational instructions we follow when applying this can be found in Practice Note 5 (Disaggregation of Dwellings) in the VOA’s Council Tax manual."


for example:
section 6.2 sets out the case law defining the distinctions regarding "separate access"
section 6.3 deals with what is physically there ("bricks and mortar test") and the fact that trumps the intention and use in respect of kitchens . lodgers, etc

Thankyou for your help. I will go through that and add that to my case.

G_M I suspect your right but I had no choice. The new dictated that some Annexes would double stamp duty so I had to find out if that applied to the property I was buying. When I asked them they said it did not qualify and so at the same time I asked about Council Tax and was told it also did not qualify for seperate Council Tax.

I am going to ask my neighbours what the history is with their property as they are the only other house with a band e house. All of the others have band d. (I suspect it is because they added a conservatory)

Because I can argue that, even if we do have a band a Annexe (Which I will contest of course) we should have a band d property with the Annexe or a band e without it.

Agree or disagree with my case your help is greatly appreciated. It's always tough navigating through the government legislation and knowing if you are even in the right or not let alone have a case so it is good to get feeback.

CIS

Whatever the Local Authority said in their opinion of whether or not it was bandable is immaterial - they don't make the decision so it's nothing more than opinion, based on their knowledge of the situation.

An annexe will be banded individually in any case but if a property is regarded as an annexe for council tax purposes there are reductions which can lower or discharge the charge which is due on it in some cases.

If you're in England then a reduction is provided for by the Council Tax (Reductions for Annexes) (England) Regulations 2013. Have you asked the local authority to apply the reduction or are they saying it's an individual dwelling and not an annexe ?

The only people who can say under what route they banded a property is the Valuation Office - until you know which way they've banded it then any argument is very difficult to make on that side of it. The banding of it and any council tax discounts due on it are two separate issues and subject to different appeals.


A property can have access through another property and still be regarded as an individual property for council tax purposes - there 2 main ways a property can be banded for council tax 1) it is a obvious individual dwelling i.e. there's no argument that it's an individual house, flat etc or 2) it's a self contained property under Article 3 of the chargeable dwellings order.

If it's been banded under Article 3 of the chargeable dwellings order then it doesn't have to have independent access to it - this is to cover situations like someone taking a large house and converting part to an individual flat but still having one front door and access via the main house.

Craig

xylophone

but a separate kitchen

It doesn't appear to be "a separate kitchen" but rather some sort of cooking arrangement within one room?

xylophone

It would be possible to put both a fridge and a cooker in virtually every room in one dwelling - would this constitute several annexes?

lincroft1710

As long as the entrance to the "annex" is via a hallway or passage or similar and not via a room of the main house, it will pass the "separate dwelling" test. It seems there may have been alterations to the main house to cause it to rise from Band D to Band E

dariune

The truth is it is a seperate kitchen. The room was very obviously built for osmeone to live in in a self contained way. I would never dispute that.

When I phone our District Council and the VOA I was very honest about that in the hope that I would avoid the situation I am in now. It is accessed via the utility room which in turn is accessed via our kitchen (Which then has a door to the outside).

So if the fact that it has a seperate kitchen is all that is needed to qualify it as an Annexe with seperate Council Tax then it is what it is.

But then the main house council tax should be band D because that hasn't changed at all other than the addition of the Annexe.

To have it as Band E as well as the Annexe being seperately taxed at Band A means we are paying for the Annexe twice.

Having said that I think it's a shame that the District Council can thrice tell me how much I will be taxed (Without ever saying they hadn o authority to do so) and HMRC/ VOA can twice tell me the same thing without ever being accountable.

I bought the house based on the knowledge they gave me and am dissapointed that they were not only incorrect but that they were out by so much (Double).

If I have to accept the Tax as is after the Tribunal I will do so (Of course) but I will do so grudgingly.

I have gone through the legislation earlier and have a few items to use as argument in our defense. None of them are 100% but I believe I have a case.