Axe The Tax (Kensington and Chelsea Liberal Democrats)

Kensington and Chelsea Liberal Democrats <info@kensingtonandchelsealibdems.org.uk>

Axe The Tax

April 21, 2005 11:28 PM

Suddenly, everyone has caught up with the Liberal Democrats when it comes to council tax. Regular readers of this website will know that we have been talking about this for years, but now the other parties have finally woken up to the issue. So now, Jenny Kingsley - our local candidate - presents some facts about the Liberal Democrat policy on SCRAPPING the Council Tax in order to replace it with the Local Income Tax.

· The average household will be over £450 better off a year.

· 6 million pensioners will pay no local tax at all - 8 out of 10 pensioners will be better off, with another 15% unaffected.

· Half of all households will be better off - a further 25% will be broadly unaffected, and 25% of households will pay more.

· No council will collect more in local taxes than they would under Council Tax: the overall burden of local taxation will be £2.4bn lower.

· A simple system, collected by the Inland Revenue, rather than 352 separate local billing authorities. There would be no bureaucratic benefit system. The confusing 33-page Council Tax benefit form means 1.8m pensioners do not claim this benefit and pay £2.9bn a year more than they should - an average of £470 per person.

· Labour's tax revaluation which is due to take effect in 2007 could see 7 million households paying £200 or more extra every year.

Jenny says, "Council Tax is undeniably unfair because it penalises pensioners and low income families disproportionately.

"It's a tax where the poorest 20% of pensioners pay nearly 6 times more as a proportion of their income than the richest 20% of our population.

"Only the Liberal Democrats are proposing a fair and permanent solution. As Charles Kennedy has said, at this election, if you want an end to the unfair Council Tax, the Liberal Democrats are the Real Alternative."

On 21st April, a junior minister had to apologise for suggesting that Labour was planning to scrap the council tax. Junior transport minister Charlotte Atkins said during an interview with BBC Radio Stoke: "It is our policy to review the system. We are scrapping the present system because it is regressive." She later issued an embarrassed correction, saying: "Our policy is not to scrap council tax but to retain and reform it."

Jenny responded as follows: "While it may be touching that a Labour Minister is admitting that the Liberal Democrats are right when we say that Council Tax is unfair and should be scrapped, I would prefer the Government came clean and told the public before May 5th what its plans for Council Tax really are - who will pay more and who will pay less?"