Friday, Jan 22, 2010
The benefits of deflation
Telegraph: Tax Payers Alliance
Good news for taxpayers in Windsor and Maidenhead this week: the council have announced the largest cut in council tax in Britain - a whopping 4%. You may remember them as the council that has pioneered spending transparency. The cut equates to £41 a year off band D properties, and will be manna from heaven to hard-pressed taxpayers. People across the UK have seen their council tax more than double in the last ten years, and even now when times are tighter than ever we at the TPA have had reports of many councils continuing to increase council tax by the maximum of 4.9%.
David Burbage, the council’s leader, told The Daily Telegraph: “We are showing that council tax can go down as well as up. For too long council tax bills have inexorably risen.
10 Comments
- If you do not have an admin password leave the password field blank.
- If you would like to request a password allowing you to add comments and blog news articles without needing each one approved manually, send an e-mail to the webmaster.
- Your email address is required so we can verify that the comment is genuine. It will not be posted anywhere on the site, will be stored confidentially by us and never given out to any third party.
- Please note that any viewpoints published here as comments are user's views and not the views of HousePriceCrash.co.uk.
- Please adhere to the Guidelines
1. Tochinoki said...
£41? Whoop-di-doo
It's a distraction from the fact that the whole council tax system needs to be completely reformed.
2. Crunchy said...
Small change. Council taxes were rising around 10% per annum in the boom, whilst peoples eyes were diverted on to the forbidden fruits of easy peasy lemon squeezy, funny money. Funny Money? : (
3. freemanphil said...
Its actually more like £80 compared with the alternative, which is often a 5% hike in rates. £80 will make a big difference to pensioners, and, spread over the County, may just keep a few more businesses in business. If you have 140,000 getting £80 of their money back, that is £11.2million infused into the local economy, and, private businesses are often 3x or more productive than local government so it will go further. For example, you pay £30 to Ryanair and about £30 in taxes for a flight. For the ticket they get a plane, on time, buy fuel, pay for fuel to be discovered, extracted and refined, pay for a place in the airport and get you somewhere else, hopefully on time at over 500mph. For £30 to government, you get frisked, and get cancer from the xray machines.
4. mr g said...
It may only be £41, small change or call it what you will but it is a step in the right direction and shows what can be achieved when a council, regardless of political persuasion, gets it's act together.
Having said that, I agree with @1 that the whole system needs to be reformed.
5. freemanphil said...
Lets hope this is the beginning of a trend, give the people back their money, politicians can't sort out a mess they created except by sliding back from the shadows from whence they came.
6. mark wadsworth said...
Classic Home-Owner-Ism, I'm afraid. Hurray for efficiency savings and tax cuts, obviously, but what's £41 a year?
Did the Telegraph rage and shout when the govt said that they were increasing VAT by 2.5%, that costs the average household about £300 or £400 a year? Did the Telegraph go into a fit of apoplexy when they said they were hiking National Insurance by 1%, costing the average employee £200 a year?
Nope, because those taxes aren't property-related. The problem is that the major parties know this, and cheerfully fleece us with stealth taxes, and then expect a f***ing medal when they give us £41 of our own money back.
Humbug.
7. dbc reed said...
Eventually Brown is bound to play the clincher: I have preserved house prices while all around they have slumped.Tory homeownerist will be well and truly dished by the Homeownerist supremo and serve them right.Perhaps then they will start to think of some real policies for the first time in the nearly half a century since they abolished Schedule A and gave up on all this political malarkey that makes their heads hurt.
8. braindeed said...
2. Munchy said...
Small change. Council taxes were rising around 10% per annum in the boom, whilst peoples eyes were diverted on to the forbidden fruits of easy peasy lemon squeezy, funny money. Funny Money? : (
Spot on.
Now it's payback time - only natural.......as a whole, the electorate voted for the clowns who made them 'rich'. If an individual’s pain is avoided through fancy tax schemes – the rest pay more.
Time to decide.
9. Blarg said...
Many conservative councils have been trying to outsource or basically privatise anything that is left it would not suprise me if they used the money raised from the sell off to provide these tax cuts, no doubt in a few years time taxes will skyrocket once the subsidies run out from the sell offs.
10. freemanphil said...
Mark, of course this is not big stuff, but, private industries like Ryanair are capable of flying a person hundreds of miles on that much capital, so it will make some difference, but the MAIN ISSUE here is THE TREND.
Are we entering a long term trend of tax cuts? Like, a 20yr bear market in tax take. I damn well hope so, and not a moment too soon.