How much Poll tax did you pay?

For obvious reasons I've been debating the Poll tax with my G/Fs dad. I'm trying to find out how much people paid in poll tax in the early 1990s and how much they paid in rates prior to this?

Anyone remember?

I'm afraid I was a schoolboy at the time so have no knowledge of what people actually paid.

 

Me and wife rates were 150 notes. Poll tax 450 notes

 

I can't remember exactly, but it was a huge rise!

 

So where you lived even a single person would have been worse off?

 

Definitely, if they had a house of about the same value. £26K ish

 

When the Poll Tax was introduced. Margaret Thatcher stated that it shouldn't cost any one , more than something like £280. She then left it up to local councils to set the rate of the tax. Labour councils, up and down the country, set their rates well in excess of this, then blamed the government.
The uneducated masses fell for this (and still it continues)

 

How much did yours go up by John?

 

I don't remember the figures but it went up quite a bit. I lived in the 'Peoples Republic of Southwark' which was quite barking left wing so they really hit it to us. Something tells me a flat of three were paying £450 per year rates prior to the change (£150 each), and double that in poll tax after (£300 each).

From memory, the rates were 'capped' by central government but community charge wasn't.

I still think the concept of everybody gets the same bill for council services is a good one. I also seem to remember most of the people rioting wouldn't have paid it in full anyway, they would have had theirs paid by those of us who were working and paying tax.

 

Anyone who learnt about 'common law' at the time would have realised you didn't have to pay a penny...

 

So the moral of the story is socialists in charge used it to bleed people dry, and socialists like ellal tax dodged.

 

Of course maybe it wasn't realistic to keep poll tax bills at the same level as rates for an average couple, especially when the wealthiest had their community bills massively reduced.

Therefore councils would have had the option of making huge cuts to public services, or increasing the tax burden on the working classes.

Unsurprisingly, the conservative councils opted to make those cuts to public services, thereby stripping essential services from those who needed them most, while labour councils decided to protect the services most needed by the most vulnerable. They didn't have the option of weighting the burden slightly towards the wealthliest, and so it hit the working classes hardest.

 

That's not how I remember it playing out.

 

I agreed with the poll tax as a fair way of taxing people. It just seemed so badly implemented. They should have phased in the increases over 5 years by which time everyone would be used to it. The rioters were mainly layabouts who didn't like being asked to pay for what they had been getting for free..

 

Thatcher could lay waste to the Argies but when a few layabouts played up she backed down,some iron lady.

We had just bought our first house and I recall the poll tax tripled what we had paid in rates.

 

That's not what happened either. She got booted out for not backing down, party got rid as she had turned into a liability.