Do you ever get a reminder for Council Tax?

flaneurs_lobster

To get back to the original question, my LA send me/partner an email each year once the CT has been fixed. It directs me to my on-line Council account where the details can be seen.

Don't the rules for using DDs say that any change in a regular payment must be notified in advance?

The_Unready

Jude57 has summarised it nicely. As a fellow council tax payer, I'm happy for my council to get as 'nasty' as they want to ensure that I don't have to subsidise folk who either won't or can't be bothered to pay their bill on time.

molerat

The council don't send out a "your payment is due" reminder, that date is clearly shown in the annual CT notice plus you don't get the benefit of being able to pay late as with a DD, if the payment falls due on a Sunday it needs to be paid by Friday. They will though send out a letter when you have missed the payment date. You can have two late payments in a year, a third puts you in breach of your payment agreement and the remainder of the annual bill is immediately due.

silverwhistle

I CBA to faff around with direct debits if I can avoid it so my solution is to pay for the year on receipt. My cash flow is healthy enough, I'm not shoving funds in and out of savings, and I reason that it's one less thing for both myself and the council to worry about.

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82128298#Comment_82128298

I'd rather have the £5k (albeit diminishing monthly) earning interest in my account rather than it making a tiny difference to my local authority's multi-million pound debt.

Conrad3000

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82127924#Comment_82127924

Have there ever been any instances of a Council seizing a property because the owner went that far in not paying?

I read somewhere they (the Council) can actually do that.

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82128436#Comment_82128436

They can sieze your house but I believe they have to send you a reminder first.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82128436#Comment_82128436

You mean like https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2g566jp8lo or https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c51z33vx3x3o

There will have been multiple court cases before the council can get an Order for Sale. The difference with the second case was it was an empty property so didnt make someone homeless… getting a Charging Order isnt too hard but the courts generally resist making people homeless but will do it as a last resort per the first linked story.

silverwhistle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82128313#Comment_82128313

Well, my bill is less than a third of that, and as my c/ac doesn't give me interest I consider it worth it for something that gives me one less thing to concern myself about. I've had to move funds for my new kitchen as I don't keep that much in my account!

Edit: As I'm in Hampshire I know all about council debt but in a small way I'm helping with the interest they have to pay.

Jude57

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82128456#Comment_82128456

Warning: Very Long Post Ahead. TL:DR Council's have a variety of methods available to them to collect unpaid Council Tax.

As others confirm, yes, they can. Council Tax legislation gives very wide ranging powers to Councils in order to collect unpaid Council Tax.

If you don't pay, the recovery process begins with the issue of a reminder. If you still don't pay and don't engage with the Council to negotiate a payment plan, or don't stick to a plan you've made, a final notice will be issued. At this point, you lose the right to pay by instalments and the full outstanding balance becomes due. If you still don't pay, a Summons for Liability Order will be issued. Council Tax cases are heard in the Magistrates Court because, in a fine legal technicality left over from Community Charge legislation, non-payment is potentially a criminal offence. At this stage, Magistrates are only able to decide on liability: Are you liable for Council Tax or not? They cannot decide how much you must pay, that's entirely up to the Council.

Once the Council has obtained a Liability Order, the full range of recovery options becomes available to them. They can pass the debt to bailiffs. They can, if they know where you work, attach your earnings. Your employer must comply with an attachment of earnings order or potentially face contempt of Court proceedings. Unlike attachments of earnings in the County Court, Council Tax attachments of earnings are at a percentage set out in the legislation and cannot be varied by the Council, the employer, the employee or the Magistrates, the latter having no jurisdiction over the attachment. Your other outgoings are not taken into account. And if you owe two years of Council Tax for which Liability Orders have been obtained, two attachments can run simultaneously. From memory, the first attachment was 17% of net pay (after income tax, NI and pension contributions are deducted) and the second was 12% of the balance after the 17% had been deducted.

If the Council cannot find out where you work (technically, it's a fineable offence if you refuse to tell them when they ask you where you work) or if you are not working but claim certain benefits, those can also be attached, again at a rate set out in legislation which cannot be varied but is very low. Broadly, disability and age-related benefits cannot be attached.

If none of the foregoing is successful, the Council can, if it believes you have assets, petition the County Court to have you declared Bankrupt. If the Council cannot establish whether you have assets, it can issue a Warrant With Bail (a summons) in the Magistrates Court, seeking your committal to prison. If you don't attend the hearing, a Warrant Without Bail will be requested and once issued, you'd be subject to arrest by Police. Anecdotally I can tell you that Police naturally do not give such Warrants any priority and they tend to execute them when they have nothing else to do, early hours of the morning and Sundays used to be the time when they picked up people on these warrants. As Magistrates don't usually sit on weekends, an arrested person would be held until the Monday and I'd be called to Court. At the hearing, you'd have the opportunity to explain why you hadn't paid and the Magistrates would undertake a Means Inquiry which is basically where you list all your income, expenditure and other debts. If at this hearing I found out where you worked or that you were claiming appropriate benefits, I would ask the Magistrates to postpone the case to allow me to attach your earnings or benefits. If the attachment was successful, the case would be postponed Sine Die (Latin for 'a later date to be decided') and once the debt was cleared I'd re-list the case to withdraw the application for committal. If the attachment failed, I'd re-list the case for a further hearing. At this stage, I'd expect the Magistrates to sentence you to a period of imprisonment not exceeding 3 months but to suspend the sentence in condition you paid X amount every week/fortnight/month. Failure to do so without contacting the Council to explain why would result in immediate imprisonment and no further hearings. There's no appeal and no remission, the full sentence would be served. And in another holdover from Community Charge, serving a prison sentence does not wipe the debt, it still remains outstanding. In practice, though, if all other methods have failed, the debt would eventually be written off. At my Council, we wrote off uncollectable debt after 6 years. Imprisonment is rare, but it does happen and of course, you'd then have a criminal record which could affect other aspects of your life.

If you are a property owner, the Council may ask the County Court to issue a Charging Order. That means that the Council register the Order with HM Land Registry and it ensures that the property cannot be sold or otherwise disposed of without the debt being paid, after any outstanding mortgage balance is cleared. If there isn't enough equity to clear the Council Tax debt, the Council will pursue the balance via the methods set out above, sometimes starting at the beginning. In my experience, it's rare for a Council to seek actual possession of a property but it does happen as the cases linked to above demonstrate.

Finally, just a caveat about Standing Orders. While the effect is much the same as a Direct Debit in that your payment is automatically sent to the payee, it's entirely your responsibility to manage it. That means that every year when you receive your Council Tax Bill (and every time there is any change to that Bill during the year) you must amend the amount you are instructing your bank to send to the Council. And you must ensure that the end date of the Standing Order is set for after the final monthly payment is made. It doesn't happen automatically and you must renew it every year, unlike with Direct Debit where you set it up once and your Bill (and any subsequent Bills issued during the year) is the formal notification of the amount the Council will claim from your bank. You never need to change anything as long as you don't move house which would generate a new Council Tax reference number. Any change to the amount to be claimed must be notified in writing and failure to do so means you can invoke the Direct Debit guarantee whereby your bank will immediately credit back to your account the amount they've paid out and then reclaim it from the payee. Errors in Standing Orders tend to be made by the account holder because it relies on their accuracy.

I'm happy to give you my hourly rate for further advice!😁