Council Tax

user1977

theartfullodger said:

DIZZYBELL said:

thank you for your comments jude57, yes you did have it correctly & yes it is a penalty ...

You'll be aware that council tax debt is one of the few debts you can go to prison for. 

Only one of the home nations has such a backwards policy, and it isn't Wales...

Jude57

user1977 said:

theartfullodger said:

DIZZYBELL said:

thank you for your comments jude57, yes you did have it correctly & yes it is a penalty ...

You'll be aware that council tax debt is one of the few debts you can go to prison for. 

Only one of the home nations has such a backwards policy, and it isn't Wales...

And, from my experience, it has always been extremely rare even in England, from its inception in the legislation that introduced Community Charge in 1990. Over my decade-plus in Council Tax recovery, with 2,000 Liability Orders obtained every week (and this in a local authority with around 79,000 properties) imprisonment was vanishingly rare, although it certainly did happen. It was usually at the end of an extremely lengthy process of trying every other means to obtain payment and numerous arrangements to pay with which the individual did not comply. You'll know, too, that imprisonment does not void the debt, which remains due. In a case like the OP's it's far more likely that an error has been made somewhere and should be easily corrected. I'm not sure it's necessarily useful to inform a first time buyer that imprisonment is a possibility, even if true, but certainly Council Tax is, like a mortgage or utilities, a priority debt and should, like them, be paid before anything else because the consequences of not doing so are much worse than most consumer debt, as the regular posters on the Debt Free Wannabe forum generally advise. I'm also bemused by advice to pay 'under protest' which is, in Council Tax terms, legally meaningless.

Non payment of Council Tax is an absolute offence in which you either pay or you don't and if asked, I'd recommend that the OP pays the full, standard rate of Council Tax for the property in monthly instalments while the issue is investigated and resolved. That way, they have evidence that they are not wilfully refusing to pay nor culpably neglecting to pay - wilful refusal and culpable neglect being the only grounds for committal to prison. From a pragmatic point of view, making those payments will hopefully mean there's less outstanding once the situation is properly sorted out and they are issued with a bill for the correct rate of Council Tax.