Be Excellent To Each Other

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7594469.stm

The SNP are to abolish council tax in Scotland in favour of a system based on how much you earn rather than how nice your house is.

Thoughts, etc?

Council tax is a charge for services. Basing it on anything but your consumption of those services is silly. They should just abolish it and add a sensible amount to income tax to cover those services, just like they do everything else, because any idea that it's in any way based on the quality of services provided in your local area is nonsense.

Dear Scotland: FUCKING INVADE ALREADY.

Tough one isn't it - can't help thinking it's a bit poll-tax-y.

What does council tax actually pay for? (Serious question, I'm sure it's probably more things I appreciate than I expect)..

I think we pay about £1800 a year currently.
What's the new rule? 3% of your wages or 3% of what you've got left after income tax and NI? It should work out to be less, but I'm not holding my breath.

Craster: Your reasoning suggests that you should have a per binbag charge for litter collection and a bill everytime you report a robbery to the police. While this may encourage people to make less litter it also has the side-effect of people taking the law into their own hands.

Having said that though I think football clubs do actually pay the police for being around their stadium because it is much more likely there will be crime caused because of this. Hmmm. I don't know. In that case then charge a flat fee for the police and charge on a consumption basis for litter. Meaning an increase in administration costs so little or no tax is gained. Arrgh damn it.

(edit)
Kalmar: Yes it is tough.

It would more than treble my council tax, so fuck that.

Plus with the way councils (other than mine where it's fallen 2 years straight) like to raise council tax, who bets on it staying at 3%?

I can't find any breakdown or even a list of what it's spent on, on the fife council website.

Everyone should pay the same amount. Those services that are universal and aren't used individually (e.g. policing etc) are of equal benefit to all. Those others which are down to individuals to choose to use (such as libraries and so on) are things that we have equality of access to should we wish to use them.

Agree.



Don't agree in the case of libraries - if you did that then they'd all disappear overnight.

On the other hand, I do think things like rubbish collection could be optional (since you have to take your own recycling to the recycling place anyway, why not take the smaller volume of rubbish as well, if you want?)

Not sure about schools, that must cost a hell of a lot. I don't have kids, but I did go to school so aught to be paying that back.

Tell you what should be paid for on a per use basis - the fucking bridges. It used to cost a quid to cross the Forth road bridge, which I'd do about half a dozen times a year. Now I'm paying for a new bridge for people to commute over in their cars every day. Nice.

Of course that's also an argument that income tax itself should be a fixed number of pounds too...

Really? How so? I mean they should be funded equally by all regardless of whether they use them or not - because everyone has the *option* to use them, and so should pay for that. That way they stay open regardless of waxing and waning in usage.

Plus, if you want to get really fluffy about it, we all benefit from well read people in the community.



The problem you'll always have with rubbish is that it's the single most visible and obvious thing that the council does in return for the enormous amount of wonga we have to throw at them.


Indeed - and if the kids aren't educated, they can't earn money to pay for your pension...



Indeed it is, which is where my argument sort of breaks down, as I do think income tax should be on the ability to pay.

Ideally, though, I'd transfer most of the income tax burden back onto corporation tax, but the CBI will never let us even go back up to the CT level we were at before Brown cut it.

Of course if you have more than one kid you should pay double and so on

Haha!

But even that should come out in the wash as being equally funded by all.

Man, I'm sort of the capitalist version of a communist.

Ah I took the opposite meaning there, sorry, we're in agreement.



Well quite, so let us have some say or action into that and we'll be happier


Hah, what pension?

Your rubbish collection, BTW, counts for about 20 quid of your Council Tax.

This proposal probably won't happen. The SNP form a minority government at Holyrood.

My reasoning is simply this - pretending that there's any logic behind it is nonsense, as it's clearly not based on consumption of services. That's not a problem - I have no issue with people who can afford larger houses subsidising those who can't. I have no issue with people who have larger salaries subsidising those who don't - but there's already a system dedicated to taking our income at source, so why don't we use that? Of course, then we'd be admitting that it really is a tax, and you'd have to inflate the amount to account for the fact that you weren't already creaming your 25%/40% off it.

I've said it before, I'll say it again - if you want to be rational about charges for council services, the Poll Tax is the fair way to do it. Of course, fair is silly, because you want the more affluent to subsidise getting poorer kids into libraries, and running around in parks instead of larding it up in front of the TV.

Craster: This is a headline grabbing vote thing isn't it. The problem with using the income tax mechanism as a source for local government funding is that taxing the affluent means that they will retire to their residence in Monaco and barely pay tax at all, losing the UK the net benefit of having them here. The proportional difference in them charging £85 a month (which is my coucil tax with 25% off) barely touches a £100,000 plus earner where taking 3% of their income tax hurts them a lot more.

I completely agree that the richer people should pay more, that seems to be the whole thinking behind council tax. It being based on the value of your property, which is considered part of your wealth. The scales should be sharper in this area though. The real problem I see is that a lot of people are seeing declining standards in council services and an increase in council tax. The bins beeing picked up once a fortnight springs to mind.

There have been some other intersting thoughts in this thread. I find this talk oddly fascinating.

And yet the whole bin thing is neither here nor there, according to Plissken. Where does it all go?



Aye, it'd be interesting to dig up some real facts as well, I should probably be better informed on this stuff.

Kalmar/Craster: It would be political suicide to stick on 3% over all tax bands and get rid of coucil tax. No political party would contemplate it. Unless they were some party hoping to grab a few votes in certain targetted areas. They might even say 10% on the upper tax band, ooh. Then they wouldn't get into government so their views don't really matter in the big picture.

The simple answer is up there. But it will never happen.

The problem with that comes in accountability. The reason Council Tax has risen so much comes from central government taking more control over finances, then applying more control over what councils are supposed to achieve (x amount of improvement in education and so on) without giving them more money. So councils have to achieve, say, 10% better results in their schools' GCSEs, with no more money from central government. What goes up? Council tax. Who does everyone whine at? Local government. Who is to blame? Central.

Genius. It's blame transference, rather like some of the silly things (selling off postal services, anyone?) that have been blamed on the EU (just over 1% of your tax, remember, so those stories about the EU wasting money? Propaganda of the most cuntish kind, given the proportions involved) when really it's a government having its way. Textbook stuff.

Less of a good argument, but also worthy of note is the whole poll tax thing, which ends up penalising old and poorer people, to pick a group at (not) random, for the sake of the younger. The principle of taxing people on their ability to pay via income tax may be sound, but the actual control over where those funds go can be, and is, ultimately lost to central government, rubbing their hands together and looking at a new nuclear weapons system and so on.

JBR: So what you are saying there is that it doesn't matter who you vote in, in the local elections as council tax and services are not controlled locally. This is not quite true, coucil tax is still set by local government. They may have to all adhere to the quotas set by the (central) government but it is up to them how they spend and raise the cash. If you have ever worked in local government you will know that they have a set budget and if they don't spend it within a year they get their budget cut as they obviously don't need the money in that area.

The major problem lies in punishing councils for meeting their target under budget. Then they have to spend £200,000 on a piece of art fot the town centre, which everyone hates. Then if they go over budget the council tells traffic wardens to become more harsh on parked motorists or litter droppers. This makes them more unpopular aswell. Man, the whole thing is fucked.

I've tried to work out where most of the cash actually goes for my area, which is tricky as we're in about three different authorities ( county, district and parish ). Anyway, it seems that rubbish collection costs me about 62 quid a year, but Surrey CC spend most of their money on Services for Communities, Adults Social Care and Children and Young People. This seems to be thing like nursing homes, home help, nurseries, fostering and roads

The more I read it the more I'm swayed by the paper:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/p ... 08_tax.pdf

Maybe I'm easily swayed though, and I'm sure there's unforseen consequences that they haven't forseen

I don't actually get why council tax is so high. Income tax pays for some Police and Fire Services as far as I'm aware. The rest are top off with council tax.

My simple break down for Council tax this year is:

Council £1080.59
Police £123.36
Fire £56.47


Based on this what else does the council provide... granted education costs but really thats not going to account for massivly loads more than the police service I would have thought?

*EDIT* actually last years invoice.

oh and my court fee's for not paying in time costs £60... so more than the fire service....?!?!?!?!?

I dimly recall a dead-tree flyer that came with one of my council tax bills, the bulk of it was "social". Stuff like taxis for council house dwellers to collect their methadone prescriptions (ooh the cynicism!)

Most of the rest is probably council wages, they do employ a huge number of people.

We are being raped more and more overtime, and even to those whom its not imperceptable, nobody can do a fucking thing about it.

You get taxed on income, this in theory pays for the government to govern the country, woot.

BUT WAIT.

Anything you sell also gets taxed (assuming you're VAT registered). Anything you buy has tax added to it. Petrol, fags, beer, etc.

AND THEN.

You have to pay council tax. Despite already paying a tax to run the country, you now pay a tax to apparently help run the local area.

BUT HANG ON.

They're trying to push this fucking peak-time congestion charge in Manchester at the moment, thus pissing off everyone who has no choice but to drive into the city centre for work. They're tried to offset this with some cheap, shit propaganda with catchy slogans saying things like 'How would you like an extended metrolink service? How would you like 400 new buses?', blahblahblah. Basically, they're saying 'Agree to let us fuck over people who have to drive, and we'll improve public transport for those that don't drive!'.

My major fucking problem with this point of view is, THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO IMPROVE PUBLIC TRANSPORT ANYWAY WITH THE MONEY THAT IS ALREADY RAPED FROM US AT EVERY CONCEIVABLE OPPORTUNITY.

Stop fucking taxing me more for shit I've already supposed to have paid for. ARRARARAHG. HHHHNNG. FLFLELGHGEH.

You get taxed on what you earn, then with the money you have left you get taxed by your council. Then, you get taxed on goods. Don't try to buy and sell things, because you'll get taxed on that too. If you've got any money left by this point, you have to cough it up in order to drive to work and earn more highly highly taxed earnings. Seriously, fuck off.

It's the rat race dude

I try to work around it.
You can't avoid income tax, so don't worry about that.

Tax on beer, fags and petrol? Who needs that stuff, don't buy it. Well, I do buy booze but it's pretty cheap, all things considered.

I have a business, so I can sell stuff and then spend the money on other stuff without paying much tax in between, well, apart from the VAT. I could VAT register it, but it sounds like a bit too much hassle.

Council tax? Live in Scotland, we're going to do away with that, apparently.

Congestion charge? Why would you want to drive in a congested area anyway? Bike FTW. If you *have* to, i.e. you're delivering stuff, then use a vehicle that's congestion charge exempt.

Refusing to do anything differently, paying through the nose and then raging about is a recipe for bad health, if you ask me..

And replacing it with something that would treble my bill if implemented here.

Excellent solution.



A reasonable number of people pretty much have to by petrol man.

For instance I do if I ever want to see my parents ever.

When doing figures, don't forget that you're paying the council tax with money you've already been taxed on. This wouldn't be the case if it was taken at source.

Seriously? To treble my bill I'd need to earn £150,000!

CG was talking about the fuel tax cost to drive to work. Driving to see your parents every couple of weeks is unlikely to put you into fuel poverty, unless they live in Spain or something.

They can't.

The crucial difference between the London and Manchester congestion charges is that the public transport in Manchester is not public. London has TfL, with the buses and tube. Therefore the money raised by the charge goes to that. THe money raised by the charge in Manchester will go to First, Stagecoach and Arriva. It will then go towards paying off the loan that the Government are giving Manchester - about half of that 3 billion in "grant" is a loan.

There is no incentive for those companies to improve service and every incentive to simply pass that free money to their shareholders.

Also: did you know Tesco in Portwood have been paying for Stockport Council to put on a minibus service between the Tesco and Stockport Market? They've been paying it for two years. There is no service because the money only pays for two days worth of buses and the Council want at least five days worth. So the Council have been sitting on the cash while Stockport Market (which pays a levy for bus service) slowly goes bust. Meanwhile, the Tesco which was deliberately built oversized will eventually get to open up that area they've cordoned off.

I was talking about the cunting congestion charge, but petrol on top too, aye. taxtaxtax.

In fact wouldn't it make sense to scrap councils or reduce what they do and have the government handle most of it. I've worked for Lincoln council (some time ago) and they appear to piss money away. They must have hundreds of staff doing the same things there that every other council does. I agree some things need to be decided locally but I would think the time my dust bin gets picked up would be the same even if it was run by shaky hands Gordon and the same rounds need gritting.

Social services again would probably benefit from this and the Police. I mean as if shearing the same resources and information would beneficial to the UK.


I

I mean what percentage of road tax gets used on transport?

There is an enormous problem with the public sector. Inefficiency is everywhere, thousands upon thousands pissed away to no end, from a small to very large scale depending on the institution and the authority behind it. Short of murdering or privatising everything, I'm not sure how it could be solved.

On the other hand, it keeps a hell of a lot of people in a job

Everyone should read "The Scheme for Full Employment" by Magnus Mills.

Most of the waste results from involving the private sector, chap.

Relevant item highlighted.

They can't get more involved in something than it being privatised. Please see the railways.

The majority of the wastage in public efforts comes from private firms taking advantage of badly run tender processes and an inability to sufficiently penalise delays and overspends. Completely privatise something and it's their own bottom line they're worrying about, not overspending the taxpayer's cash.

Not saying that privatisation is a good thing, just that comparing a private enterprise with getting private firms to do the work for public bodies isn't valid.

EDIT - Privatising the railways was always a ludicrous idea, as was the water companies, because you can't run a sensible privatised industry where competition is impossible. I think anyone would agree that privatising telephone services was an excellent plan - we wouldn't be in the consumer-advantageous position we are now if BT were still running the whole show.

I tend to hold sway with the idea that privatisation means the companies then want to earn profit, and thus might shed waste. Since the public sector is nothing but waste, you can see why I might think this is better.

Actually, I've got it, an epiphany. The reason privatisation doesn't work is because these businesses are so expensive and shit, they'll never be money-making, whereas if you keep it under the government's control, they can blithely pump all of our money into it to keep it afloat and maintain the semblance of success, despite being loss-making and shite.

Yes. I feel all zen.

Except it is.

Instead of gouging the government, they'll gouge the customers.

Oh, wait, they did this with the railways.



So, that would be almost every public service, then.

Healthcare? Nope.
Education? Nope.
Road-borne public transport? Nope.
Even fire and police? Unwise perhaps, but not impossible.
Cleaning services? Nope.

The only cases where it's impossible is where utilisation of a fixed availability resource, such as space on railway lines, is a factor.

I don't really see what's wrong with having a large company run the whole thing. It seems the obvious solution to cut out all the miscommunication, fighting and buck-passing that causes terrible problems with the railways.
It just needs to be non profit making so that you can be sure service and safety is not being compromised to line someone's pockets.
If it's non-profit-making then the government has to run it, because nobody else will want to*.

*unless you can get trainspotters to work for free?

Since when did you turn into a Daily Mail reader?



Good luck arranging for a private company to take your waste away for less than the council does right now.

I work in the public sector dude, my disenchantment comes from first-hand experience. I can't begin to tell you how many hundreds of people work here that actually don't need to. 5 idle fuckers in each department could be replaced with one well-paid movitation person. Seriously.

Surely that's just a management problem? And I'm sure one that isn't isolated to public sector bodies.