Doubt anything will happened but there’s a gov.uk petition about it here:
Not sure why they lumped stamp duty in with it tho…
I don’t understand the point on stamp duty. Stamp duty is a big deal if you buy an expensive property.
It’s more important to try to stop properties going up and up rather than just remove the tax. Obviously the petition wouldn’t be very sensible if they suggested the government should get control of the housing market as that’s not measurable or achievable with one variable.
Council tax is out of kilter with the variation in value of properties nationwide. It appears to have been set based on the financial position of individual local authorities back in the 90s. So a high spend authority then, will have a higher council tax within the same bands as a low spend authority. This is regardless of the current value of property in each area.
So the local authority started with a base cost which it then split into bands and passed onto the property owners - this was then increased for uplifts over time. The basic cost per household per band hasn’t significantly changed. In the meantime property prices have greatly increased in some areas. So in London where property has greatly appreciated you might have a lower council tax than somewhere on the other side of England where property is closer to the average.
This sort of thing isn’t easy to change. The surcharge is hugely simplistic and will maybe never be applied. The government doesn’t really address the complexity of the issue at all in the response. But it is extremely complex and cannot be fixed easily or quickly. Certainly not during the course of one or even 3 governments.
That’s why the Poll Tax was logical (but unenforceable)
That’s the problem these days, it’s made complex so nobody understands it but has to pay up anyway.
There used to be an old bloke sat in the tax office in Doncaster, he knew everything about tax and you could go to see him and he would explain it in simple terms…
Introduce computers and now people only know what goes on in their own little corner of the tax system.
Bring back poll tax and charge everyone a fixed rate regardless, but really, how many more taxes can they invent.
Is it time to start bricking the windows up?
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