Attachment of earnings council tax

Carabelle78

Hi,
Apologies if this is the wrong board for this - struggling to navigate. My question is about attachment of earnings orders. To cut a long story short, I was unable to pay my council tax payments for the year and after escalation it has resulted in an attachment of earnings order being issued. My employer has already taken two payments that have amounted to over £1,000. I am in about 50k but am sole earner in house. At this rate, they are going. To take a further £750 out of my wages on each of the next three months. It is having a devastating impact on things at home and I’m struggling to cope. When it was issued I accepted I just had to get on with it as it’s legally binding and is the way it is for a reason but it’s having such an impact I wondered if there is any way I can contest how much is taken each month? I know they calculate the deduction according to earnings so there’s not a lot of my employer can do, but I know there’s no point contacting council either (bridges were burned with them a while ago). Is there any process for applying for a reduction?

Willing2Learn

Hi Carabelle78 and welcome to the forum

[STRIKE]If your current repayments are unaffordable, then I believe you can apply to the court to have the amount changed.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/action-your-creditor-can-take/changing-a-court-order-for-debt/[/STRIKE]

Incorrect information above

kazwookie

You also need to look at your outgoings and expenses each month.


Gas /electric/ water/ mortgage / food / mobiles / cars/ petrol/ etc and see where you are loosing money each money, and pull it back in to help meet the payments.

CIS

Willing2Learn wrote: »

Hi Carabelle78 and welcome to the forum

If your current repayments are unaffordable, then I believe you can apply to the court to have the amount changed.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/action-your-creditor-can-take/changing-a-court-order-for-debt/

Not for council tax purposes. The court has no power to interfere or vary it.

CIS

I know they calculate the deduction according to earnings so there’s not a lot of my employer can do, but I know there’s no point contacting council either (bridges were burned with them a while ago). Is there any process for applying for a reduction?

Only to ask the council to cease the order. The % deductions etc are set in legislation and the council have no powers to vary the amounts (nor do the court). If the council refuse to withdraw the order then there's not a lot you can do other than to make a complaint and ask that they review their decision.

WhenIam64

Not going to argue with CIS for obvious reasons.

Just out of interest, why did you let it get this far? Were you advised in some way that they couldn't do this? There would have been 6 or 7 steps before it got to this.

Carabelle78

Firstly, I’m not looking to shirk any of the responsibility for this. I know I allowed the situation to unfold and I’m not squawking about it, just wondered if I was wrong in my assumption what’s done is done. I’ve had a rocky relationship with my local authority over council tax. This isn’t the first attachment they’ve issued against me. I don’t know how other authorities vary but mine is profoundly inflexible when it comes to financial difficulties. When I lived in London boroughs they were much more sympathetic, that’s why whatever difficulty I ran into I’d always end up settling the balance without any action. This one is different. It’s kind of two strikes and you’re out, and that’s that. There are two gentlemen who work in the revenues office, they are both as bad as each other, extremely unsympathetic, desperate to escalate. They also seem to make up the rules as they go along- one minute they’ve no authority, the next they have. I’ve been told before they wouldn’t help me because of the wage I’m on, I argued I didn’t realise council tax was means tested, and the rest is like a red rag to a bull. I figured when the attachment was applied for there was nothing more I could do because all the paperwork referred to subject to council’s approval - and as I explain above, this was a non starter. If once an attachment has gone this far it is irreversible in every sense, from authority to court to employer, then I guess my question’s been answered and I just have to accept it. Thanks all for the advice

EssexHebridean

I'd normally say to put together your SOA (Statement of Affairs) from the link in my signature and post it in here and we can take a look and see if we can help you make some short term savings to at least alleviate some of the financial pressure for the next few months while the money is being taken back. Assuming that your first post was intended to read that you earn about 50k then even as sole earner that's a pretty decent income, so it may well be that there are savings that you've not spotted that can be made in your outgoings. At the moment however I believe the SOA calculator is down so you may need to do this manually.

Essentially you need to list your full household income - so including any benefits that come into the household - and then all of your outgoings, taking care to remember the more occasional things like some insurance policies, clothing, haircuts - basically everything that you spend. the final section would be to account for the money that needs to go out on regular debt payments, along with the interest rates and capital balances outstanding on those debts also. The Calculator would do all the adding up for you usually and leave you with your net worth figure at the end, however that's pretty irrelevant anyway - the key figure you need to know is what you are supposed to have left over after paying everything out, so a negative figure is a full on red-flag, that needs addressing and fast to avoid the situation you are in worsening. A positive figure is great, but also needs immediate investigation as generally people don't actually have that surplus available to them, so that would need tracking down.

As far as your post above goes, if you feel you're being unfair treated by specific people in the Council tax department have you made a formal complaint about this treatment? It certainly sounds as though it would be a good plan to ensure that in the future you only deal with them in writing.

Davy_Jones_II

More information might help. What is all of your money going on in you earn 50,000 a year and are in “profound difficulties”?

Could your partner not start working too, have you nothing at all you can sell? No cars, no smartphone, no games console etc?

Posting a statement of affairs might help people to give you some tailored advice, and the fact that this is the second time that you’ve ended up here, not fixing things after the first one, suggests that you very likely do need it.