Here’s a contentious one for you: when Maggie Thatcher introduced the poll tax in 1989 there was uproar and riots, but was the underlying principle actually more logical and fair than the current council tax system of today?
Council tax was created by John Major and is a tax mechanism based on house value. We are however told that council tax is a charge for use of local services such as education, refuse collection, roads and police: no bearing on house value whatsoever.
The poll tax was a personal tax for said services; it didn’t matter what your house was worth or how many people lived in it. Everyone paid the same as everyone else: nice and equal.
Trevor Phillips must have loved it but others didn’t like the poll tax because it meant that the “rich” were no longer subsidising the services of the “poor”, adding to the perception by Labour voters that the Conservatives are the party of the few and not the many. But surely the poll tax epitomised fairness and equality – something which New Labour are obsessed with to the point of actively discriminating against Average Heterosexual White Man.
I believe the current council tax system to be unfair because it can price people whose pensions were robbed by Gordon Brown and whose savings were destroyed by Gordon Brown out of their family home that may have passed through generations. Often they are forced to reluctantly sell it. Of course, Labour supporters jump up and down with glee when they hear stories like that because they despise people that have inherited money, property or other wealth. It’s not fair, of course.
Politics aside, if council tax is indeed a tax on services, surely it should be in proportion to their use. The assumption that because a house is worth X then the demand on services will be Y is unfounded and frankly, bollocks. If a single pensioner were living alone in her large, very expensive detached family home, she would use very few of the services for which funding is said to come from council tax. On the other hand a family of 6 asylum seekers packed into a terrace in the town centre would use a lot of the services but would pay less between them than the pensioner pays herself, assuming they’re not on benefits.
If you live alone these days you end up shafted for council tax, for what? Half a wheelie bin every fortnight and a town full of pot holes.
Excellent comment Phil, from what I have read it sounds like a much fairer system than council tax. Why should the well-off always subsidise the poor who do nothing to help themselves. I believe if you want to be well-off then bloody work for it don’t sit around like socialists whinging and whining about how well other people have done because they are jealous.
I think it is a very fair tax by the sound of it. If you use the services then you should be willing to contribute and the size of a person’s house should be irrelevant. Why should someone in a 5 bed detatched subsidise someone in a council house? If anything the 5 bed detatched owner will typically pay a lot more income tax than the council tenant and is less likely to actually utilise council services. If everyone pays the same that is fair.
But you’ve just assumed that everyone that lives in a house that’s worth a lot is wealthy. It’s often not the case and the occupant inherited the house. Maybe a child that never left home, who knows.
It’s not really about why people in expensive houses should subsidise people in less expensive ones. It’s more about why one person should subsidise a family because the one person lives in an expensive house.
Lets take it further. Consider two houses each costing 5 million quid. One has 6 people in it and one has 2 people in it. Why should the council tax payable be the same on both when the impact on local services from one house is 3 times more than from another?
They do proportionate taxes on car emissions, so you pay less if your car emits less, so why not on council tax?
I should have made it a bit clearer, I meant generally people in bigger houses are more well-off. I agree with your comment, we should have a proportionate system
The system should be in proportion to demand on services in the assumption that every individual demands and contributes equally.
That would make a lot more sense
This tax introduced by Mrs Thatcher was widely condemned as being unfair and inequitable. The principle of the council tax was that everyone would pay the same. Whether you were wealthy or low paid, you received the same council services so therefore, the argument went, you should pay the same amount. The problem was that if the poll tax was £500, it could be a high % of a low income workers disposable income. Another problem with the poll tax was that the amount could vary widely from one borough to another. Some rich boroughs were able to charge very low poll tax, others charged a very high %. From an economic point of view we can say that the poll tax is a very efficient tax. However, the criteria of a good tax involves various criteria – not just efficiency. These include
• Fair – proportionate to ability to pay
• Enforceable. – The poll tax was so widely disliked that many people refused to pay. The number of non poll tax payers was very high.
• Low Admin costs of collecting.
• Horizontal equity. People in same circumstances should pay the same. In theory the poll tax was horizontally equitable. However, in practise many people avoided paying.
• Easy to understand. The poll tax was easy to understand.
All said and done the poll tax hit the middle to low income earns very hard and young people starting of in life would have made buying property extremely hard. A monthly wage for a junior nurse in 1990 was £1300 if £500 going on poll tax where would mortgage money come from?
Depends whether you mean £500 a month or £500 a year!
Oh come on phil if it was 500 a year I would have rioted if the government didn’t introduce it.
That sounds awfully mismanaged and unjustified. How could they possibly even think that they could take 6 grand a year in local services tax off every person?
Well in all fairness it was 500 average across the country I think Blackpool was 300 and something. But the principal that it hit the young and newly employed hardest is still true.
Just spoke to some people of my parents generation who all seem concurrent that the poll tax was around £300 per person per year in Blackpool.
In an average household with 2.4 children that would still be about the same as what they recoup now, only single people living alone wouldn’t be battered for it.
Your comments are too simplistic and could only apply if everyone started from the same position in life but they do not.
From day one children go down different paths, the children with well of parents who can afford to place the children into better nursery schools , start their education at a earlier age. The teachers at the independent schools tend to be better and the class sizes smaller. This principle extends throughout their school life. They are more likely to go to university and generally do not have the same financial constraints and considerations which may well prevent them from going to university. Generally education is the key to financial success.
I could go on but saying they should go and work for it is unfair unless everyone receives the same hourly rate!!!
That just seems like envy politics; root out all the public schoolboys and make sure they’re battered with tax because their parents are financially successful?
How do you collect poll tax from those who choose not to be on the electoral roll in order to avoid being chased for unpaid tax,by banding properties by value rather than the number of occupants makes it easier for the council to collect the domestic rates,the problem with the current system is during the last 13 years under labour the domestic rates have doubled.
The goverment has gone on a spending spree the last 13 years with money they did’nt have and by starving councils of funding resulted in higher demands on our council tax for the ever increasing staffing levels and of course their annual salary increase ,when in the private sector payrises have been frozen or been non existent for some years and lets not forget their goldplated pensions which is paid for out of the rates,ho lets not forget early retirement with a golden handshake.Life is not fair, if you are like me and you don’tl ike what you hear well it’s time to do something about it.
i agree with petrer comments.
I could live with the rate of council if while council went up so did services. At the mo it seems we pay a disproportionate amount of tax while services are dropping.
I know scroungers who get it free, they should contribute, perhaps a proportionate income tax is the answer,the current system is shite,fuck labour, party of tossers.
That is a good idea and it has actually been proposed by the Lib Dems before replacing Council Tax with a Local Income Tax. I agree the current system sucks.
The problem is that council tax isn’t all that local. The government takes all business rates, not the local council, the council just gets domestic rates and a big grant from central government that dwarfs this amount. So when the government keeps adding what should be done locally on these councils and not increasing their grants by the cost to provide these services, our local contribution rises and the services are cut. Of course local councils tend to be adminstered by idiots who love pointless red tape and wouldn’t survive two minutes in the private sector.
I remember living under the poll tax – and most of those that protested against it were unemployed and not paying it anyway. My family as a whole paid less under it – as living in a poor town in a reasonable house council tax was very high to pay for all those paying f all. We also had to pay a higher poll tax to make up for those who hadn’t paid it, and weren’t chased for it being a Labour council.
Really I don’t see why we have to pay housing benefit at a local level – or why those on the dole mean that council tax isn’t collected at all (there could be a reallocation from central funding). The present system which is loved by Labour keeps poor areas poor until they decide to redistribute money Robin Hood style to impress their pathetic supporters with their largesse.
And I’m really sick of this government (not that I have any real faith in Cameron either) making me a childless person pay for schools (my family paid again for my education which meant two full-time jobs and a part-time one for them and lots of gardening, household chores and help with that part-time job as a childhood for me because of their crap schools) and then pay again for child tax credits and child benefits for the feckless who have lots of children they can’t afford to support. Stick two fingers up to “the future” – I want decent living conditions now.
I concur with most of what you say. Is it fair to say that most that protested against it fit into the traditional, Labour voter stereotype? I was only 8/9 so I don’t really remember!
We go over time and time again how those that choose not to work and sit at home reproducing and claiming benefits can end up better off than some lower end workers.
But what is the solution? There’s already a minimum wage and people are allowed to work as many hours per week as they want.
The welfare state is a gravy train but it’s also a necessary one for those that genuinely have hit hard times. But as Boney mentioned on the Richard Branson article, you’ve got the stressed lower middle incomes flogging their family heirlooms on Cash4Gold just to pay their bills and put food on the table, whereas if you drop slightly further down the income ladder you can allow yourself to freefall into a comfortable stress free benefits career.
I don’t know if you saw the Sun yesterday, but they had an article about a middle aged woman who was proud that she lived her life on benefits, claiming that benefits were her “wages”. She was showing off the big TV with Sky, latest laptops, designer clothes, and so on that she’d bought with benefits. Here’s the link.
I don’t inherently have a problem with that; everyone could and should save money and there’s no obligation to spend all your benefits; but the fact that she sees no incentive to work and the fact that she isn’t being forced to look for work I do have concerns about.
Maybe one solution to that would be a food voucher system rather than the current blind faith in handing over the cash. If you don’t give people the money, they can’t live the life they want and will have to look to work/crime in order to source it.
I went to university in 1989 and was hit by it first hand on what remained of my grant. The thing is, that it wasn’t that much and to this day, I argue that it was a fairer tax than that which existed before and that which we have now.
The reason there were riots is (assuming the same net amount is recouped across the country) that while any sweeping change like the poll tax will benefit half the population, it will also adversely affect half the population. People gaining from such a change, don’t usually say anything, while annoying half the population will always cause uproar.
labour the working mans spokesperson, what a joke, bunch of war mongering thieves, gordon brown and his henchmen, tony blair the smiling bastard, we pay tax out of our wages for services, why should we pay council tax as well, joining europe we will be better off they said, what a fck joke, this country sends its young men off to war to come back in coffins,looks after people like jon venables the scum of this earth, and this labour goverment robs its good people to feed others.
If you think its bad now, just wait until after the election!
fair! you tell me in 1989 i left school, joined a YTS sheme, I was paid £29 per week (£1,509 per year) I recieved a bill for poll tax for £400 (3 months pay) which I paid myself and it was not easy as I had to pay rent as well. If was a good idea then lest bring back a tax that takes 3 months pay from everyone again….. do you think it as fair?
So it’s fair to force a pensioner out of her large family home that has been passed down by her parents by charging her THOUSANDS per year for council tax – a tax for services she probably doesn’t even use?
Yes it was and would be now with the minimum wage. On that level of pay you were entitled to housing benefit and poll tax benefit so you shouldn’t have been paying anything at all. However those widows left living in family homes on a very much smaller income and getting nothing out of the system weren’t fleeced or forced to move at an age when it’s difficult to move on your own.
There you go Steven, with the minimum wage the poll tax could be brought back.