Daily Telegraph | Overhaul property tax to save 19 million households £435 per year, MPs urge Chancellor
This article originally appeared in Daily Telegraph on February 3rd, authored by property correspondent, Melissa Lawford.
Proposals for a proportional property tax would lower bills for some – but hike annual costs for others
Conservative MPs have urged the Chancellor to overhaul property taxation by scrapping stamp duty and council tax to slash bills for 19 million English households.
Under plans drawn up by campaign group Fairer Share, stamp duty for primary residences would be abolished and homeowners would no longer pay council tax. Instead, they would pay an annual proportional property tax equivalent to 0.48pc of the value of their home.
Analysis by WPI Strategy consultants found that under the plans, 76pc of English households would be better off, making average savings of £435 per year.
The savings would be funded by tax hikes on homeowners in the more expensive parts of the country, namely London and the South East. Here, they would pay extra taxes initially capped at £1,200 per year.
But when they opted to sell and buy a new property, homeowners would then face an annual bill worth 0.48pc of their property's value, in lieu of paying stamp duty up front.
For a £2m home, for example, this would be equivalent to a total tax bill of £9,600 per year. The buyer would only start paying the higher rate after buying, after benefitting from the abolition of stamp duty.
That would mean the stamp duty saving on buying this £2m property would be £153,750. It would therefore be roughly 19 years before the buyer would start paying more tax overall.
Kevin Hollinrake, a Conservative MP and chair of the Property Research Group, a collection of MPs campaigning for property tax reform, said: “The time is right to put fairness back at the heart of how we tax property.”
He added: “Replacing stamp duty and council tax with a proportional property tax would ensure homes are taxed at their current value. It would also boost transactions throughout the market, creating huge economic output at a time when we most need it.”
Andrew Dixon, of Fairer Share, said that council tax “has led to low-income households paying a tax rate five to 10 times higher than those fortunate enough to live in million pound properties. The wrong households are paying the wrong taxes at the wrong time.”
The current council tax system is based on property values that were made in 1991, which have not been updated in 30 years.
Under this plan for proportional property tax, which would be revenue neutral, in 49 constituencies (all in the North and Midlands) every household would see their annual tax bills reduced. In the most deprived 10pc of constituencies, 99pc of households would benefit.
In the 44 “red wall” constituencies that the Tories won from Labour in the 2019 election, 97pc of households would save £660 per year.
Fairer Share has proposed a cap of £100 per month on existing homeowners’ extra tax bills. This would mean that in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, 88pc of households would pay an average of £1,050 extra each year.
To protect asset-rich cash-poor pensioners, downsizers could defer paying increases in their tax bill until the point of sale.
Aaron Bell, Conservative MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, said: “Stamp duty is a terrible tax that limits social mobility and puts families off from moving as their circumstances change. And council tax disproportionately hits renters and those with less expensive properties. I believe it is time for the Treasury to be bold and consider a fundamental reform.”
John Stevenson, Conservative MP for Carlisle, said the property tax system “needs a fundamental overhaul. I would encourage the Chancellor to be a reforming chancellor.”
Will Tanner, of Onward, a think tank, said the system of council tax valuations “bear no resemblance to reality.”
He added: “Council tax is actively working against levelling up: as a share of disposable income, Londoners pay half as much in council tax as households in the North East.”
A Government spokesman said: “We have no plans to make such changes. We have analysed Labour’s plans for such an annual house price tax, which would mean soaring bills for hard-working families and pensioners who have saved and improved their homes. These proposals would have the same faults.”
© Melissa Lawford / Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021;
Think tank endorses Proportional Property Tax in paper to the Chancellor
The think tank Radix has endorsed the Proportional Property Tax in a cross-party submission to the Chancellor. Below is the summary of the paper and its authors. Read the full paper: Modernising Property Taxes.
Modernising property taxes – including by abolishing Council Tax and Stamp Duty and replacing them with a Proportional Property Tax (PPT) – will be key to meeting the UK’s debts post-Covid and should be announced in next month’s budget.
These are amongst the core proposals in a cross-party submission to the Chancellor, entitled Modernising Property Taxes, produced in partnership with leading law firm Shoosmiths LLP. “Out of date, regressive and unfair” are amongst the ways that the series of essays by senior politicians, businesspeople and academics describe both Council Tax and Stamp Duty, while accusing politicians of previously being “too scared” to modernise them.
“That should all change, however,” argues Radix Chief, Ben Rich, pointing out that “Sooner or later, we are going to have to address the debts incurred during the pandemic. The question is against what tax base? Property is hard to hide, so it is an excellent source of income for governments, so long as it is taxed fairly and transparently.
“That’s why Radix and many of the contributors to this paper welcome the recommendation in his essay by Andrew Dixon (Founder of the Fairer Share Campaign) for a Proportional Property Tax to replace Council Tax.
“It is also why we support the recommendation of Michael Johnson (policy adviser on pensions and taxation) to scrap Principal Private Residence relief and make Property Capital Gains Tax payable on all residential property sales, using the new revenue to abolish Inheritance Tax on main properties and Stamp Duty on the purchase of a main home.
“And it is why we welcome the analysis by businessman and academic, Andrew Purves, of taxation in Singapore and Hong Kong, which argues that fairer property taxes could replace a substantial part of the income from direct taxation in the UK.”
In his essay entitled “The Case for Reform”, Conservative MP and Housing Select Committee Member, Kevin Hollinrake, argues in favour of PPT, while the author of Labour’s Land for the Many Report, Beth Stratford, uses hers to call for a series of measures, including a 15% tax on the price of land or property purchased by companies owned in secret jurisdictions.
Rachel Kelly, Assistant Director at the British Property Federation, proposes to bring VAT on repairs to existing residential properties into line with that on new homes. Investor Hugh McNeill suggests that property taxes be redesigned to take into account that property income streams will already be claimed by other parties.
Vaqas Farooq, a leading Real Estate and Regeneration lawyer at Shoosmiths LLP calls for a broad coalition of housebuilders and institutional investors, as well as activists, charities, media and local governments, to press the Government to seize this opportunity for reform.
Catherine Williams, the Head of Living Sector at Shoosmiths LLP, says:
“Covid-19 has hit our communities hard, making the case for property tax reform stronger than ever. The SDLT holiday has been a welcome boost to the housing industry, but the resulting uptick in purchases, and expected drop off when the holiday ends, is a stark reminder of just how much of an inhibitor Stamp Duty is to people moving home.
“A ‘root and branch’ review of property taxes could tip the scales of supply and demand and make homes more affordable for more people, driving government revenues in other ways. This debate is well overdue and urgent in the shadow of the deepest recession in living memory. Shoosmiths is pleased to have partnered with Radix to encourage discussion and to help us all find a better, fairer way forward.”
Radix is calling on Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to signal his intention in next month’s budget to modernise property taxes as the basis of his proclaimed strategy to build back better.
Read Modernising Property Taxes.
Daily Telegraph | Stamp duty should be scrapped – and the whole property system reformed
Our founder, Andrew Dixon, welcomed this excellent contribution to the debate. “It is exciting to see The Daily Telegraph highlight so many of the problems with existing residential property taxes. Wonderful to see the references to Sir Winston Churchill and Sir James Mirrlees. Russell mentions the flawed nature of stamp duty – a tax on how much something changes hands. And he goes on to point out the unfairness of council tax. Russell writes about the benefits of a proportional property tax and challenges the Government to be bold.”
The following article originally appeared in Daily Telegraph on January 19th, authored by Economics Editor, Russell Lynch.
With a big majority and Brexit secured, the Government has no excuses for being timid.
In 1909, Winston Churchill – then a Liberal serving in Herbert Asquith’s Cabinet – had this to say on the subject of property and land: "Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains – and all the while the landlord sits still.
"Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived."
I’m not sure if the Prime Minister, as a biographer of Churchill, came across the above extract, quoted approvingly in Nobel laureate Sir James Mirrlees’ comprehensive review of the UK tax system back in 2011. But perhaps he should take heed of the sentiment as the Government begins to plot its way out of the fiscal mire left by Covid-19.
Back then, Sir James pointed out the “mess” of our economically inefficient system of property taxes which ignore land values, stifle the number of transactions and fall disproportionately hard on the poorest. The scandal is that nearly a decade on from his study, hardly a thing has changed. Political calculation and the vocal complaints of the losers has always sapped the courage of ministers, meaning that perpetuating the absurdity is always the path of least resistance.
Take stamp duty. Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick is promising new laws to protect statues from woke militias but stamp duty – a supposedly temporary effort dating back to 1694 to fund a war with France – is one historical taxation edifice which needs toppling in quick time. After all, any tax levied on how much something changes hands, rather than its value, is by definition flawed. As countless studies have shown, it saps mobility in the housing market, particularly at a local level where moves are less likely to be driven by longer-term factors like a new job.
LSE economist Christian Hilber estimated in 2018 that the old “slab” system of stamp duty, where a £250,000 house bore 3pc duty on the entire value compared to 1pc at £249,000, cost almost as much in lost transactions as it made in revenues for the Treasury. While that bunching effect is now gone, the drag – or the lost “welfare” in the economic jargon – still remains due to the impact of the mismatch in the market and forgone transactions, he says.
The Telegraph is campaigning for the current stamp duty holiday, which expires on March 31, to be extended permanently. Better still would be to scrap the damn thing altogether, for the reasons above. The inefficiency of the tax means that the cost won’t be as much as the £11bn in pre-Covid revenues it raked in, although from a “levelling up” perspective selling a tax cut disproportionately benefiting buyers in London and the South-East may be difficult.
One thing is certain though: stamp duty can’t be considered in isolation. A proper approach would see a comprehensive review of all property taxes announced in March’s Budget, with a pledge that any agreed changes would be phased in over several years to ward off the threat of short-term market dislocation.
Top of the list would be replacing the manifest unfairness of a council tax based on 1991 property valuations. This admittedly could be expensive news for a lot of people, including myself. But how long are we going to maintain the absurdity of charging people on the basis of prices 30 years ago? What happens when it gets to 50, or even 100 years? Surely we have to somehow get out of this ridiculous taxation corner we’ve painted ourselves into by ducking regular revaluations. Hence he needs to consider other options.
A housing services tax of the type proposed by Mirrlees would see renters or owner-occupiers pay a small annual share of the rental value of their properties, with 0.6pc seen as revenue-neutral for replacing council tax. This is not a “mansion tax” or anything like it: it is effectively how much you pay for “consuming” the property you are living in. There would be no reductions for single occupants or empty homes to extend the inefficiencies in the market, for example.
Admittedly the potential losers will include older, retired owner occupiers in larger homes, which is a constituency few governments of any colour like to upset. But it would address the unfairness baked into the current system where those at the top are paying proportionally less. In fact, an HST would look a lot more like one of the predecessors of council tax, domestic rates, which were also charged as a percentage of estimated rental values. If the Chancellor wanted to scrap stamp duty on housing transactions altogether, the tax could potentially be set at a higher level to make up the revenue.
If Sunak wanted to go further still, his review might also look at options such as a land value tax, targeting the land which a property sits on. Such a move, based on the rental potential of the land, would capture the unearned “betterment” that landlords have accrued from their surroundings, to take us back to Churchill.
Countless economists from Adam Smith onwards have argued for one and even Milton Friedman – never a fan of tax – said it was the “least bad option”. The reason that they aren’t more common, however, are the practical difficulties of valuing the land separately from the buildings, and the potential for legal challenge that it brings, while the politics also gets in the way again.
Even allowing for Covid, the Government has yet to lay down a real marker on tax despite symbolic gestures such as scrapping the tampon tax when we left the EU’s orbit. Certainly the current crop of headlines about a vindictive raid on homeowners won’t do anything to bolster the Chancellor’s nerves, especially after the Government gave Labour a chasing over its “garden tax” in the build-up to the 2019 election.
Asquith, it has to be said, dropped the land tax that Churchill spoke in support of a year later after opposition from landowners in the House of Lords. But with a majority of 80, the Government has the chance to be bold, and to take some steps towards sorting out a shambles that has lingered for decades. The real question is whether ministers have the nerve to do it.
© Russell Lynch / Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021
Fairer Share gains national media coverage as the campaign reaches 100,000 supporters
Yesterday, our campaign reached the magnificent milestone of gaining our 100,000th supporter. Since we began the campaign in June, we've been stunned by the positive feedback we've received and the progress we have been able to make in pushing for a fairer property tax system.
As we reached 100,000 supporters, we've seen some fantastic coverage in the national media.
Here are some of the highlights:
We were delighted to see that our proposal is supported by The Sun, who have been hostile to property tax reform in the past. Their headline "GET RID, RISHI: Scrap council tax and stamp duty, Rishi Sunak urged in plan backed by 100,000"
The Daily Mail also reported on the potential for a new property levy to replace Council Tax and Stamp Duty, stating "One of the main criticisms of the council tax system is that it is based on property valuations dating back to 1991 while stamp duty is viewed by critics as a barrier to people getting onto, and moving up, the housing ladder."
There was another positive review in The Metro, which said "Rishi Sunak is coming under pressure to ditch council tax and stamp duty completely. Almost 100,000 people have signed Fairer Share’s campaign to replace council tax, stamp duty and the controversial bedroom tax with a flat rate payment based on the value of a property."
The Daily Express who have reported on the negative impacts of Council Tax most frequently since last March, said "Supporters of the plan say it will be hugely beneficial to voters in the red wall seats in the north that the Tories won from Labour in 2019. They also say scrapping stamp duty would remove the barrier to families trading up to a bigger home and elderly people in large houses downsizing."
The Daily Telegraph focused their ire on Stamp Duty with the headline: Stamp duty is Britain’s worst tax. It’s time to move on, Mr Sunak, which is far from surprising given their "Stamp out the Duty" campaign.
The Daily Star, City AM and ConHome also covered the story, with the former reporting "Charity Fairer Share is pushing for the Chancellor to kill off not only stamp duty but council tax as well, urging Mr Sunak to come up with a new, fairer tax for all property owners. They say one in four adults in the UK regularly go into debt in order to pay their council tax."
Why we're supporting Fairer Share
Now that we have reached the milestone of 100,000 households supporting our campaign, we wanted to hear the thoughts of our supporters on why a fairer property tax system is so important to them.
Here's what they had to say:
Susan from Staffordshire - "I’m supporting your campaign because I believe that as a renter rather than a home owner that it is the landlord who should be paying the majority (if not all) of the Council Tax."
Shaylee from Kent - "I am supporting your campaign as it is a subject close to my heart and affects myself and my family. I think we live in a society where families struggle daily with basic household bills and the cost of living but much of this goes under the radar. We are encouraged to save for our families' futures, but with ever increasing bills such as Council Tax this just isn’t possible. A lower, and a more evenly distributed system for Council Tax would help many families."
Claire from Gloucester - "Your scheme is incredible and appears to be much fairer than the current scheme. As a single mum working full-time in a primary school throughout the pandemic, putting myself at risk daily, I bring home a shockingly low wage and with two teenage boys eating me out of house and home, I'm sad to say all of my money goes on bills with Council Tax being a big one. Treats are few and far between and there is no chance at all to save - it really does feel like us low-earners live to work."
Maxine from Manchester - "Everyone is going through the same challenges because of this horrendous nightmare of a pandemic which means that many businesses are closed. Thousands upon thousands of people don't have as much money coming through to pay their bills. Fairer Share would like the government to replace Council Tax altogether. This would help immensely people that just don't have enough funds. People are having to consider do they feed themselves or put the heating on. This is just horrendous!!!"
Becca from Doncaster - "Where I live you pay council tax but nothing is ever improved. It feels that half of our money gets swallowed up. The government are very good at helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, it's about time someone stuck up for the average Joe and said enough is enough."
Keith from Birmingham - "It’s been a bad last 8 months since the pandemic started and I have been struggling to keep on top of bills and especially Council Tax. I am supporting your campaign as I believe that Council Tax is too high and the council have cut services to the bone but every year the tax keeps rising."
If you would like to get in touch and let us know why you're supporting our campaign, please email us at support@fairershare.org.uk
A fairer tax system is essential to ‘building back better’
This article originally appeared in Oxfam's 'Views & Voices' blog on December 16th, authored by Robert Palmer, Executive Director, Tax Justice UK.
Tax Justice UK shares Oxfam’s commitment to tackling inequality, eradicating poverty and standing up for those who typically struggle to get their voices heard. The need to address these issues has only become more urgent in light of the covid-19 pandemic, which in the UK as elsewhere has had a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable in society, including ethnic minorities and those in low-paid and insecure work.
As news of vaccine breakthroughs finally put an end to the crisis in sight, it would be easy and tempting to revert to the status quo. But recovery from the pandemic provides us with a rare opportunity to place society on a more equitable foundation, including a fairer system of taxation.
Prior to the crisis, the UK’s tax system – unfair, poorly-understood and ineffective – was already in dire need of reform. But with the government signalling that it intends to increase taxes in the coming years, now is the time to undertake reform so that tax rises do not aggravate the failures of the current system.
One of Tax Justice UK’s key priorities is campaigning for greater taxation of wealth. In the UK, wealth is undertaxed in comparison to income, exacerbating a highly unequal distribution of wealth in which just 10% of households own 40% of all household wealth. Taxing wealth more effectively would not only reduce this inequality but provide additional public funding for our increasingly stretched schools, hospitals, social care and the many other public services people rely on.
Our manifesto for tax equality, in which we set out the case for greater taxation of wealth, identifies council tax and stamp duty as particularly problematic and ripe for reform. By taxing people living in lower-value housing more – as a proportion of property value – than people living in multi-million-pound mansions, council tax is a deeply regressive tax that unfairly benefits the UK’s wealthiest individuals and regions. Stamp duty, while more progressive, makes it unnecessarily costly to downsize or move home, creating economic inefficiencies. The manifesto calls for a proportional property tax to replace both taxes, which unlike council tax would tax homeowners consistently based on a fixed percentage of property value.
Despite a growing consensus among experts and across the partisan divide that council tax is unfit for purpose, the ever-growing arguments and evidence in favour of its abolition have so far struggled to cut through. That is why Fairer Share, a new grassroots campaign to replace council tax with a proportional property tax, is so important. By setting out the problems with council tax in an accessible and intuitive way and putting forward a detailed and fully costed alternative, Fairer Share is making a valuable contribution to the UK’s burgeoning movement for progressive tax reform.
That’s why earlier this year Tax Justice UK was delighted to sign an open letter to the Chancellor, coordinated by Fairer Share and supported by organisations across the political spectrum including the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Demos calling for property tax reform. The letter urged the government to “conduct a thorough review of Britain’s residential property taxes” and replace council tax and stamp duty with a fairer system, based on property value and ability to pay.
Since the poll tax riots in 1990, which directly led to the introduction of council tax, successive governments have tried their best to avoid the topic of property tax reform. This is partly due to understandable concerns about the complexity of the task, and partly due to less noble fears of alienating donors and wealthy homeowners in key constituencies.
Yet in recent years a growing body of research and analysis has gone a long way in resolving many of the objections associated with council tax reform. And when it comes to public opinion, politicians have less to fear than they might think. Polling conducted by Fairer Share shows that just 29% of the public believe that the way council tax is calculated is fair, while only 33% favour keeping it unchanged. Meanwhile, recent research by Tax Justice UK shows that a majority of people want to see wealth taxed more, including 64% of Conservative voters and 88% of Labour voters, with 67% in favour of tying property tax more closely to a home’s current value.
Once the covid-19 crisis subsides, the government will attempt to meet its ambitions of “building back better” and “levelling up”. Tax reform, including replacing council tax, must be part of that agenda. Tax Justice UK looks forward to working alongside Fairer Share and other like-minded organisations in the coming months and years to ensure that is the case.
LISTEN | Conservative MP explains why Council Tax must be replaced
After the launch of the Conservative's Property Research Group, the following interview took place with its Chair, Kevin Hollinrake MP, on talkRADIO on 11/12/2021.
At Fairer Share, we look forward to presenting our solution for The Proportional Property Tax to the Property Research Group in the coming months.
00:50 - Introducing Kevin Hollinrake MP.
01:07 - The problem with Council Tax.
01:35 - Why this call for reform is very different to the Poll Tax.
02:35 - How Stamp Duty harms the economy.
03:48 - What is the aim of the Property Research Group?
05:10 - END
Kevin Hollinrake MP | I'm launching the Property Research Group of MPs to fight for reform of outdated property taxes
The article by Kevin Hollinrake, MP for Thirsk and Malton, first appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 11/12/2020. For the original article, please click here.
The current system is quite simply not fit for purpose. Take council tax. Every household in England – renters and owners alike – pays this annual fee to help fund important local services, from rubbish collection to maintaining parks and public libraries. No-one disputes the purpose of the tax. Yet, according to new polling out today, council tax is the most unpopular tax in the country.
This is largely because the amount of council tax households pay does not in any way reflect the current price of their home. The tax is calculated on a system set up in 1991, nearly 30 years ago. This outdated tax therefore has a disproportionately higher impact on younger and poorer people who tend to live in low value homes. A person living in a property worth £100,000 may pay six times as much tax, as a proportion of their home’s value, compared to someone living in a £1 million property.
Many low-income households who cannot afford to pay are aggressively pursued by local council and debt collection agencies. According to Citizens Advice, 40 per cent of problem debt can be apportioned to council tax. Covid-19 has only made the problem worse with an extra £700 million in council tax debt accrued by 800,000 struggling households since March. The inability of people to pay council tax is contributing to the perilous state of local government finances. According to statistics published by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, households in England collectively owed more than £3.5 billion in council tax. Over the past five years there has been over a 30 per cent increase in overall council tax debt.
Stamp duty is another property tax which is an attack on aspiration and ownership. By taxing property transactions, stamp duty discourages homeowners from moving – be it an older couple downsizing or a growing family upsizing – that would lead to more efficient use of the country’s housing stock. Figures published earlier this year by the campaign group, Homes for Later Living, show that over 3 million people over 65 would like to move home but don’t feel they are able to. The fall in transactions ultimately results in fewer new homes being built because market signals, to which housebuilders respond, are distorted.
My friend, the Chancellor, has implicitly acknowledged the economic harm inflicted by stamp duty by cutting the tax where it is seen to be most burdensome. In addition to the tax-free threshold for first-time buyers, in response to the downturn caused by the pandemic Rishi Sunak announced the exemption from stamp duty of all residential property transactions worth up to £500,000 until April 2021. Given the ongoing impact of Covid-19 on the economy and the long recovery that is likely to follow, returning stamp duty to its pre-crisis levels next April would be an unnecessary and unaffordable act of political and economic self-harm.
Business rates is yet another property tax which hampers investment. It is one of the biggest contributors to the death of high streets up and down the UK. And it has an impact on some of those places most in need of levelling up. Seventy-five per cent of constituencies with the highest rates burden are located in the North and the Midlands. This is because the tax rate does not mirror economic performance, so for areas facing economic challenges the burden is much higher. The Government has recognised this and taken bold action by publishing a fundamental review of business rates and providing a business rates holiday for retail, hospitality and leisure during the Covid pandemic. This has been welcome but long-term and sustainable reform is vital.
Council tax, stamp duty and business rates are just three examples of an out-of-date system which is in desperate need of reform. This is why I am forming the Property Research Group. Together with colleagues from right across the country, we will be putting forward proposals to design a fairer and more efficient property tax system that works for all.
Kevin Hollinrake MP is Chair of the Property Research Group.
Supporter letter | There are systemic failings with Council Tax
One of our supporters, John, has shared his personal experience fighting against the unfair Council Tax system in Northumberland. He supports Fairer Share because he agrees that we need one simple, fairer tax system.
Dear Fairer Share,
My complaint is not just about the level of Council Tax bills, but also about the way councils arbitrarily make decisions and enforce them, employing automated processes that end up with debt collectors.
My first experience of Council Tax was when my late aunt—who was elderly and suffering from dementia—had her Council Tax discount benefit wrongly cut off.
Unfortunately, similar methods were also employed on me, despite being a pensioner on an income level that should qualify me for a Council Tax discount and housing benefits. I had helped my aunt buy her house on the basis that it would come to me after her death. When she died, it took us 7 months to sort out her affairs and carry out essential work to the house, so it could be brought up to the required standards and be lived in safely.
The council however, acted immediately to disqualify my Council Tax discount and housing benefits from the date the property title was passed to me. Its capital value was used to disqualify my entitlement even though it was a liability not an asset. The council made me pay the full Council Tax on the inherited house as well as the rented property I was previously staying in nearby. I was also made to repay “overpaid” housing benefits. The council and the Valuation Office both rejected my argument that paying two sets of Council Tax, plus paying back housing benefit constituted severe hardship.
My income as a single pensioner was reduced to far below the sum the government specified for pensioners to live on, ironically the same formula used to determine benefits in the first place. At the same time as they refused to alleviate the hardship they had caused, the council were giving out exemptions to private landlords for carrying out the same kind of essential repairs that I had to.
I was not only concerned about the money and hardship, but also the way the council behaved throughout.
I was pleased to come across your campaign as the current system needs to be simplified. I do wonder how many there are out there paying too much and not having fair assessments or appeals, especially with millions of homes going into debt since the start of the pandemic. There seems to be major systemic failures.
John L
Northumberland
Join John, sign and share our petition for a fairer system.
WATCH: Treasury Committee | Tax after Coronavirus
The House of Commons Treasury Committee held an oral evidence session on November 18th for its Tax after Coronavirus inquiry. Reforming Britain's property taxes was one point of discussion. Watch what Robert Palmer of Tax Justice UK and Arun Advani, Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, had to say:
Robert Palmer (Tax Justice UK)
Arun Advani, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Warwick
We look forward to seeing the Treasury Committee's recommendations for dealing with Britain's property taxes after Coronavirus. The evidence heard in this session, in addition to the written evidence we submitted should emphasise how important reform could be.