On Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:54:12 +0000, hugh ] wrote:

In message , Rod Speed
writes
hugh wrote
John Williamson wrote
hugh wrote
John Williamson

Council tax valuations

The revaluations should have been no more than five years apart.

Revaluation should only take place when a property is sold IMO.
That is the only point at which the value of the
property has any
relationship with your income.

Then you get the situation where, like my previous home, it doesn't
change hands for ten years, by which time it had almost quadrupled in
value. the one over the road changed hands four time while I was
there, and septupled in value over the same period, before dropping
back to five times it's 2001 value. Under the current system,
they're both in Band A, and both sold for about the
same price in 2001.

I know a number of people who have been in the same house for over
thirty years. Are you suggesting that their property taxes should be
based on a value from the 1970s?

Why not?

Essentially because what the property tax is spent on isnt any
different for those that have owned the place for over 30 years
than it is for those who have only owned it for a year or so.

The tax is mostly spent on social services and education, not services
directly related to properties

It's not quite that simple. The council's income is largely spent on
those things, but the little of the income is from council tax, about
21% for our authority. They get large grants from the government.

My council spends £237m on "Learning and Skills", which I assume is
education, but gets a £176m "Dedicated Schools Grant" from central
government. It gets another £208m from central government, so a total
of £384m out of £624m from central government. That should cover
almost all the education and social services spend. (In the case of
our local authority, the social services spend seems to be largely
imaginary!)