Money off council tax
Every year just before Bonfire Night the Government publishes figures showing how well it has managed to give money away. The answer usually is ‘not very well’. The latest figures show that the Government failed to give away council tax discounts worth up to £1,800,000,000 in 2004/05. Most of it – more than a billion pounds – should have gone to people over 60. About two million over 60s should have had an average £582 a year off their council tax if only the Government made a better job of getting the discount to them.
Of course the Government sees it differently. It blames the over 60s for not claiming the money. It wonders why two million people don’t claim significant amount of money off a tax that is widely hated and often hard to afford.
To get the discount you need a limited income and low savings. To find out what ‘limited’ and ‘low’ mean you have to declare your income and, even worse, your savings, and send off proof of both with a form. The Government calls it ‘targeting’. We used to call it means-testing. And a lot of people think the reward is not worth the intrusion and the hassle.
So two million over 60s and half a million younger people never get the discount that the Government wants them to have. And the latest figures show that the number who didn’t claim grew by 20,000 in 2004/05 and the unclaimed money grew by £150 million compared to a year before.
So this November 5th the civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions should forget about collecting old branches and chopping up those broken kitchen chairs from the shed. Instead they should toss on the fire all the volumes of complex rules about who gets what and how to prove it.
Then, when they’ve done their annual check for barrels of gunpowder in the basement of Parliament, they should give MPs a vote on a simple scheme that ignores savings completely and gives everyone aged 60 or more and not in work a discount on their council tax. And promise in future that council tax for pensioners would never go up faster than their pensions.
That would show Guy Fawkes why Parliament was worth saving.
Meanwhile, if you hate paying council tax you may be one of the missing two million who can get a discount. Click here to download Paul Lewis’s new free guide ‘If only I’d Known’ – Discounts on Council Tax.
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