hope this is april fool

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mark.t

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Every house in England is being revaluated to calculate new council tax payments.

The new valuations and revised property bandings will be revealed in September with new charges coming into affect from 2007.

London, the South East and South West are expected to see the largest number of homes moving up the bands.

Council tax payments are based on 1991 prices. This was when the last check was carried out before the tax was introduced.

In 1991, the average house price was £73,000 but the figure is now more than £190,000.

Labour says it will reform the council tax if re-elected.

The Liberal Democrats have warned that millions of households will be hit by council tax increases of 20 per cent or more after the General Election unless the levy is scrapped.

They are committed to scrapping the tax and replacing it with a local income tax.

The Conservatives said they would offer a rebate to households where all adults are aged over 65 covering up to half their bill, up to £500.

Following a recent revaluation in Wales, 60 per cent of houses stayed in the same bracket.


as seen on ntl home page :eek: :eek: :eek:
 
Afraid it's not an April Fool Joke.

Houses in Wales have already been re-evaluated last year and mine has gone up a band. :mad:

S.
 
They are not re-valuing to charge us the same amount as before.
I wonder what they will do with the extra money they will collect?
 
There's been something similar in Aus this week with the valuation of land being revised and possible collection of back taxes I hear.
 
time for a NATIONAL objection to this methinks :mad:

After all, everything (mostly) goes up with inflation. Council taxes have gone up higher than both inflation and wages yet they STILL want to adjust because of property values ??? Even though if you dont move there is no gain ???

Plus - a 3 bed semi is STILL a 3 bed semi etc - what the hell is going on? All these people want to do is suck more and more an more money out of our pockets - perhaps to give more free money to people stupid enough to want to asylum in this great ! country :confused: :mad: :mad: :mad:
 
raise money

The government need to raise money for the work-shy who they love....as the money pit is being empted fast by these parasites ...so I am putting one of these in my car window...to get the message across to tax payers
 
Property owners have been cheering for the last couple of years because their houses have doubled in value, now property owners are trying to make light of it?

Possibly another brake to apply to soaring property prices, which for me can only be a good thing!
 
I don't see why anybody is complaining. the price of property has soared (which at some point will benefit the homeowner) yet the council tax valuation is basd on figures which are seriously outdated.

Quite honestly I (and I suspect nearly everybody else in this country) would happily pay income tax based on what I was earning 15 years ago, whilst getting my current wages yet being able to go to the shops and buy stuff at 1925 prices :)

If they do it properly then it will benefit those at the lower end of the ladder living in properties that are now in the same band as much higher value properties - but then fair and equal taxation is something people who are earning more and therefore paying more seldom see as reasonable. This isn't another form of stealth tax, it's bringing the system up to date and going towards funding local services I still think it's a much better and fairer alternative to the system it replaced.

At least the money they gather is used to pay for things that YOU are using and benfitting from - if you are that worried about what they are spending it on, then ask them - local council accounts should be published and in the public domain

Andy
 
the price of property has soared (which at some point will benefit the homeowner) yet the council tax valuation is basd on

but my point is that countil tax HAS gone up every year more than enough already. Plus, the idea of a tax bracket related to they type of property ie 1 bed flat v 3 bed semi etc is one thing but why should we contribute MORE in council tax because the VALUE of a house has risen????? Its not as though council tax has stayed the same for 10 years because it hasnt . . . if it had then a revaluation would be ok - its just another sodding way to get money OUT of your pocket . . .
 
council tax has gone up, but then it's gone up because the bills the councils have to pay have gone up. The wages of the employees who are paying mortgages have gone up to keep pace/ahead of inflation as (presumably) have your wages. More importantly the value of your assets have risen and therefore your overall "wealth". Is it unreasonable to expect people to be taxed on what they are worth rather than at a flat level for all?

I disagree with the council tax as well but I think it needs to be made into a fairer system that is based on true house values.

The bands have to change in order to reflect the housing proces and if the bands are adjusted then some will gain and some will lose out.

We are now at a pretty ridiculous state of affairs where band A properties have all but dissapeared from the marketplace and a quick look through our local papers shows there are no band A, B, C, D properties for sale and would place the cheapest (habitable) one bedroomed flat available into band F alongside three bedroomed houses - tell me that's fair :)

Andy
 
andy_k said:
council tax has gone up, but then it's gone up because the bills the councils have to pay have gone up. The wages of the employees

Andy


our local council have sold off school land striped assets lowered the level of service ....have people working for them who have had a job invented for them spent thousands on pointless "ism" issues rebranded themselves .... sold off direct services .. ... in Middleton we had to join Rochdale under protest and we where a very good catch for the Rochdale borough.....because we benifitted Rochdale ......Middleton was a town ship and a very effective one at that ... with everything in-house we join the masses along time ago ....and suffer.. if we where a town-ship again our council tax would be lower :mad:
 
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Mine somehow, has actually gone down :bannana:
Last year was £1270
This year £1075.65 :rock:
 
andy_k said:
I don't see why anybody is complaining. the price of property has soared (which at some point will benefit the homeowner) yet the council tax valuation is basd on figures which are seriously outdated.

Hmm. How has the rise helped me? I bought our house in 1995 for £65k now it's worth over £200k. In that time nothing has changed to my use of council services. And, as has been previously stated, council tax has risen more than inflation during that time. Now, I will get hit again, for doing nothing.

If I decide to sell now, sure I'll gain from it, BUT I will pay more again for a bigger house. So any gain is lost in an instant.
 
the point is that the bands they have now are unrealistic, you can't buy a band A property (unless it's a shed on some remote outer hebridean island) so half of them don't apply to any properties currently on the market

They need to be reorganised to reflect todays prices - perhaps this is something that should have been done annually?

Here's an interesting thought, if a new build house is valued at it's 1991 price how can it even exist let alone have a value? Therefore it is surely outside of the counsil tax system :D

I didn't say I like the tax system, infact i said just the opposite, but at the moment it's unfair with people living in small one bedroom properties paying the same tax as those living in large four, five or six bedroomed ones.

Things have changed to your use of council services though, because nothing stands still from the cost of removing your waste (wages, vehicle running costs, repacement costs etc), to the local library (books, computers etc) the list is endless and why should - say a couple in their late fifties, both working full time and hardly using any council facilities pay the same council tax as a family of four who take full advantage of all the local amenities?

There's no way of collecting taxes that everybody (or even anybody) will think is acceptable but at the end of the day we've got to pay it.

As I said before you should ask to view the council accounts and see how they spend your cash - it can make interesting reading :)

Andy
 
andy_k said:
tThere's no way of collecting taxes that everybody (or even anybody) will think is acceptable but at the end of the day we've got to pay it.

Yes there is. It's called a flat rate income tax. The same rate for EVERYONE, regarless of income without ANY deductions or special pandering to anyone. There would be no need to tax returns and the Inland Revenue could be shut down. Imagine the money that would save!!!! The rate could be very low, like 10%, but it would only work if everyone paid the same rate, if you only earn 10k you pay 1k in tax, if you earn 100k you pay 10k in tax. If you are a big corporation with 1 million profit, you pay 100k. So simple it hurts. They key to it though is that there can be no loopholes, no way to hide any money. It may sound a bit idealistic but just imagine it for a minute.
 
agreed it's simple. so simple it hurts but....

a, I said there's no system that's acceptable to everyone and that system wouldn't be because people who now pay little or no tax would complain as would pensioners (presumably they would be paying tax on their pensions?) to name but two. Do we tax kids doing a paper round? (that would no doubt disp[lease them) If you do a job for or help a friend and they buy you a meal do you pay tax on that? technically it's earnings so you should but it wouldn't make you happy

b, With no agency to collect the money who is in charge, who enforces the law or are you suggesting some national "honesty box" ? There's bound to be loopholes or you would end up so bogged down in rules that you wouldn't know where to start declaring taxable income - just as an example try and describe exactly even the most basic action - say opening a tin of beans in an entirely foolproof and loophole free method without ending up with 5 pages of instructions :)

Simple very seldom means simple when it comes to the law:)

Andy
 
Hi,

Surely the whole point of the Council tax is to fund 'local' services etc. The point of the banding system was to relate service 'usage' to property values as these values reflected potential usage of these services i.e. a 5 bed property would/should in general be occupied by more people than a 3 bed property etc. and, would, therefore make more demands on local services etc. (refuse collection etc. etc.) so should pay more etc. etc. Thus the banding system was devised as a blanket system to assign relative usage of local services. Another valid banding measure may have been no. of bedrooms etc. Overall the value of a property is not really relevant.

So in my opinion the only fair reason to revalue is if a property significantly enhances it's living space (i.e. it increases it's potential to use local services). Else nothing has changed. Your house in reality is worth nothing till you sell it (as you have to live somewhere). This revaluation process is solely another method of 'official' robbery. We (may) have to pay more and for this extra money we'll get nothing i.e. we'll continue to use exactly the same services as before, plus in the following years we'll have to pay above inflation percentage increases on this increased tax etc. etc.

While the business/manufacturing sectors etc. have seen their final salary pension schemes disappear (in part to Brown's stealth tax on pension dividends etc.) we're all expected to continue to chip in even more to fund the Council employees continued final salary pension schemes etc.

The real problem, it seems to me, is that we're continually 'being mugged' by 'officials' and there's f'all we can do about it!

Rant over (but it still p....s me off).

Cheers,
 
I think higher earners should be exempt from Council Tax as we already pay too much into the pot. The difference should be made up by lower paid workers who are much more likely to use Council services and therefore may work a bit harder than they do now
 
Aswall said:
I think higher earners should be exempt from Council Tax as we already pay too much into the pot. The difference should be made up by lower paid workers who are much more likely to use Council services and therefore may work a bit harder than they do now

tee hee

perhaps they should exempt people who drive big cars from road tax because they pay more in fuel duties.

I'm more than happy for the rich to settle up on a "pay as you go" basis then when they need the police services they pay the going hourly rate for however many officers are required (could get expensive), same for the fire service should it be required, these services would of course be subject to a credit check (delays could prove fatal) being performed before the first fire engine left the station. Perhaps they should also pay for seperate refuse collections purely for "rich people" :D

I'm sorry if this offends anybody but if you choose to live in this country then you kind of have to abide by the rules and pay the taxes.

I seem to remember Paul Daniels and Frank Bruno saying that if labour ever got elected they'd leave the country - why are they still here?

Andy

Andy
 

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