Help rising energy bills by spreading council tax payments further

tux900

This feels like the wrong forum but as the thought only occurred to me when looking at how to help deal with our rising energy bill I thought I'd share it...

Historically, monthly payment of council tax has been over 10 months from April to January (inclusive). However, whilst councils have seemingly not been shouting about this it has apparently been possible since 2013 to change this to 12 months (thus April to March). Of course, you don't end up paying less overall but it does even out (and lower) the monthly commitment slightly e.g. my £2178 annual bill will change from £218/mth to £181.50/mth (although as we're part way through the financial year it'll actually be £145/mth for the remainder this year).

As I say, it doesn't change the overall amount due but I think it will help us slightly with cashflow and I don't think we'll be missing anything by no longer having the 'payment holiday' that we've previously had in Feb/Mar each year.

Please do someone shout if I've overlooked something and actually I'd be better off going back to 10 monthly payments! And don't hesitate to point out if I am the last to have discovered this! :-)

Northern_Wanderer

I have paid council tax over 12 months for as long as I can remember. I'm sure a lot of people don't know they can though so thank you for sharing.

wild666

I paid CT by 12 monthly instalments for as long as I can remember. 2012 they tried to change it to 10 monthly instalments until I complained and told the council I would cancel the DD unless they put it back on to 12 monthly instalments.

brewerdave

wild666 said:

I paid CT by 12 monthly instalments for as long as I can remember. 2012 they tried to change it to 10 monthly instalments until I complained and told the council I would cancel the DD unless they put it back on to 12 monthly instalments.

Just looked back thru my records and I've been paying over 10 months at least since 1996 ! My Council actually offered to change to 12 payments a few years ago ,to help with spreading the payments.
I suspect the Councils prefer 10 payments as it aids with their year end cashflow !!.

luvchocolate

I've been paying 12 payments for about 10 years. It helps me to budget...but I know some people feel they benefit from the 2 "free"  months 

maisie_cat

We pay over 10 months because I like the "free" months, the £225 extra in each of those two winter months is very handy.

Section62

10 monthly payments is the default for council tax direct debit payment.

You could opt for 12 payments instead, but it used to be that you had to ask for that by (something like) 30th April, otherwise you had to wait until the following April to switch.

A quick check around a random selection of councils suggests many (most?) now allow the election to pay by 12 installments to be made and become effective whilst there is still a sufficiently large balance to pay for that year.

jimjames

On the other hand if you pay your energy bills by actual use each month it could be better to have the extra money in Feb & march to cover the much higher bills that you'll have for Jan & Feb 

EssexHebridean

Yes - this one really is roundabouts and swings - for a lot of folk they will indeed find the budgeting aspect of the same amount going out every month without fail helpful - a lot of people are so used to the way they pay the CT (and water rates, in a lot of cases, too) that they simply don't notice the "free" months at the end. We always make sure that those amounts that we're not parting with on those two months are ringfenced and specifically earmarked for being siphoned off elsewhere - last year one lot went to long term savings, the other got put into premium bonds. the risk if you don't keep a close eye on your budgets though is that the money sits in a current account and just gets frittered in the "ooh we've got a bit more money than we thought, let's have a takeaway" way of thinking. 

tux900

jimjames said:

On the other hand if you pay your energy bills by actual use each month it could be better to have the extra money in Feb & march to cover the much higher bills that you'll have for Jan & Feb 

Yes, I should've mentioned that we pay a fixed amount each month for energy (again to help with cash flow) hence why we've gone with the 12-monthly council tax option.