Council tax. review.

[pipme]

Link bbc report

Bills have risen by £270 per average Band D household in Wales, where a revaluation took place last April, according to Tory figures.

And that was the forerunner - guess their properties were relatively low value anyway .... oooer !!

Make no mistake about it .. council tax is going up big time, for most.
Local taxes like Council Tax and housing costs are not included in Brown's Consumer Price Index (CPI), which conveniently replaced the RPI as HMG's measure of inflation .. so Labour's wonderful economy will look unchanged as you and I stump up even more dosh (CPI another Euro-crap item) ... And if the RPI itself starts increasing then interest rates will already be on the up .. up goes the mortgage up goes the Council Tax down goes property prices ... homes repo'ed .... sold at knockdown prices to snouters ... The poor old consumer in debt for ever repaying dosh for something he no longer has the use of ..... All to relieve us of our money, never gonna change !!

 

[nstreet]

If you going to review council tax and link it to current house values, then it has to be reviewed at least on a yearly basis. It's not good setting it now when propery prices are unusually high and then keeping it that way for the next ten years, especially as the home owner has little to no control over the value of the property. Thats whats going to happen though.


I liked GB's little bit on GMTV this morning, the economy is doing so well, the house prices are sky high so the tax payer has to help first time buyers purchasing their first property!!!! It's his fault that interest rates are low and property is so high, but we get penalised for it. T055ER5

 

[jasy]

8) Mr Blair and Brown are a pair of scheming idiots people. Mark my words. Owning your own house in this country will soon be a criminal offence!

 

[Thermo]

at least the tories have said theyll scrap th ereview before anything else. How strange that the report on it all has been delayed until after the election

 

[pipme]

.....The last council tax valuation was carried out in 1991, when the average UK house price was £73,000. It is now just under £180,000.
Surveyors for England started work this month, with any changes due to come into effect in 2007.
LOCAL INCOME TAX PLANS
More winners than losers?
Fact check: local income tax
London, the South East and South West are expected to see the most homes moving up the bands but ministers insist #councils will not raise more money overall....... In Wales .. The Tories say council tax bills have risen by an average of 9.1% per household in Wales, where revaluation happened last April.
If it was repeated in England, it would mean bills for Band D homes would rise by £270, they say....

Apparently, in Wales, four times as many houses moved up a band as moved down.
# If the average is an increase and the councils do not raise more money ? Sounds a bit like the stats for speed cameras .. fatal accidents down at every local report .... overall official figures show deaths to have increased ... B u ll sh it ! from the man who gave you Weapons of mass destruction .. he's at it again - -and he'll get away with it -- but not in his mind, he knows the truth and it is aging him perceptibly, there is a price to pay for fame or even infamy ... Tone's paying it.
I mean, they do not even give credence to the Deputy PM it is a joke, Tone and 'Gordo the virtual DPM and PM'

 

[nstreet]

Just because my house is worth 10K more than my neighbours, why should I pay an extra £400.00 p.a. for the same services? My neighbour has no mortgage and therefore more disposalable income, My mortgage is sky high so I have to pay more tax, where's the logic in that.

Why don't they tax you on the groundspace the property occupies, at least that won't ever change. Oh yeah, the government wouldn't get as much money to waste.

Anyone else have any better ideas on what to base the tax on, so we can send them to Blair and Brown. If they had one more in the act would they be the new version of the three stooges?

 

[pipme]

Has to be related to ability to pay surely ? All roads lead to local income tax .. I guess we have, or are being manoeuvered in this direction.
It seems the most equitable way of dealing with yet another tax.

I think one rate, one tax or tithe, then they'd be jiggered respect to the stealth taxes ... Must be a nonsense having the plethora of taxes and the cost of admin we endure !

Hey, up ! Did I mention inflation this thread, and loads before ? The difference twixt increase in GDP more or less what we earn as a nation, and increase in M4 the amount of dosh existing .. been running at 5% or so for some time ... printing more than we are earning -- HMG stoking inflation !! CPI up at 1.9% RPI 3.2% ( they have rules in place to cap OAP rises at 2.5% .. not implemented yet)
So.. latest M4 increase = 10.4% GDP = 2.9% dif = 7.5%
So they increased the dosh sloshing about by 7.5% more than the increase in earnings .. where would that leave you and I ?
Hence :-
Link to Wallets upside down again folks

Link BOE Source

 

[david and julie]

Never any mention of stopping the councils wasting money though. I filled in a council form yesterday. It came with an attached leaflet they said I must also fill in. The form was from a department called the diversity monitoring unit. It asked what colour I am, what my diet is, and my religion.

The original form was for a disabled parking badge, for a pensioner neighbour who is not very good with forms and often asks me to fill them in for her. the second one is in the bin.

 

[kendor]

8) Mr Blair and Brown are a pair of scheming idiots people. Mark my words. Owning your own house in this country will soon be a criminal offence!

if jasy thinks this then it must be true i think i'll sell up now

 

[AdamW]

Never any mention of stopping the councils wasting money though. I filled in a council form yesterday. It came with an attached leaflet they said I must also fill in. The form was from a department called the diversity monitoring unit. It asked what colour I am, what my diet is, and my religion.

The original form was for a disabled parking badge, for a pensioner neighbour who is not very good with forms and often asks me to fill them in for her. the second one is in the bin.

In these cases (where they don't have the "I don't want to tick any box" box), I generally come out to be a black muslim vegetarian! I really honestly hope that one day they take me to court and try to prove I'm not black (even though I am as white as they come). Seriously, how do you prove (or even define) someone's ethnicity? Hold them up against a swatch?

 

[Damocles]

I don't understand this fuss about revaluation. Council tax may be a pretty lousy tax but it only makes sense at all if it is based on the actual value of your property, not what it was worth 20 years ago.

The amount you pay depends on what band your house is in but also on how much money the government decides to raise from council tax. If it chooses to raise exactly the same amount of money then it would just mean that some pay a bit more and some a bit less. All changes would reflect the true value of your property, which is as fair as this tax ever gets.

It only raises more money of the government chooses to slip in a tax increase hidden in the revaluation. Didn't do that in Wales, did they?

Notice that the conservatives promised not to revalue it...which would actually make it fairer, and did not promise not to raise it.

 

[nstreet]

I don't understand this fuss about revaluation. Council tax may be a pretty lousy tax but it only makes sense at all if it is based on the actual value of your property, not what it was worth 20 years ago.

People will disagree on this subject till the comes come home. imho, house prices are 'engineered' and driven by forces that the householder has no control over. If you purchased a nice home so years ago and were near the limit financially, because of the artifically high property values, you will be in effect be penalised by the government for having such a proprty. Where's the fairness in that. We don't have crystal balls to look into the future when budgeting for a home.

I hope your property type doesn't all of a sudden become the 'in thing' and hence the value rockets. You may see your c tax increase a couple of bands.

 

[jasy]

8) Mr Blair and Brown are a pair of scheming idiots people. Mark my words. Owning your own house in this country will soon be a criminal offence!

if jasy thinks this then it must be true i think i'll sell up now

 

[david and julie]

If we ever see a massive property crash, will there be another revaluation to reduce the council tax?

 

[ninebob]

Council tax is supposedly to pay for Police, refuse collection, street lighting, etc etc. I fail to see what the value of your home has to do with any of the above. If I was fortunate enough to live in a 3 bedroomed house, does the street lighting outside cost more than the street lighting outside a neighbouring flat?

As it happens, property value means little to me as I've only ever rented. I've also never lived anywhere outside of band A. I agree that it should be linked to how much you can afford to pay. How about scrapping council tax altogether and putting a little on income tax?

And my opinion is NOT just because I have a relatively low salary. I sympathise, for example with people in London/Brighton etc whose property has risen in value at a ridiculous rate whilst perhaps their salary hasn't. [edit - I mean those who rent their property: clearly property owners have profited greatly from that trend!]