Council tax based on 1991 house prices

Not necessarily; a house at the upper end of the price range in 1991 is probably still in the upper end now, and a house at the bottom end is probably still at the bottom end. The only prices that I would expect to move within the scale would be properties in areas within council boundaries that have fallen or risen relative to the average prices within that area (e.g. as a result of "urban regeneration" schemes).

That is, of course, unless the bands are changed such that more properties fall into the higher bands that they do at present, in a similar way that "fiscal drag" has increased the proportion of the population paying higher rate income tax. I suspect this would be political suicide for any government that did this, as council tax increases are much more visible to the general population than income tax rises due to aforementioned fiscal drag.

Best Regards, Alex.

Probably. There has been talk about it.

Might be a waste of time if prices crash and return to 1991 levels by, say, 2011. :-)

No. A revaluation would not make the slightest difference to the amount of money taken, because the amount of money needed is decided first, and the amount of money to be contributed from each house is calculated from that.

If 1991 was 20 years ago, then by all means do keep the tablets handy. :-)

If you revalue all houses at what would be today's market values, and if you were to find that on average each house is worth 3 times what it was in 1991, then you'd simply multiply all the band boundaries by 3, and you'd find that most houses would stay in the same band they were in before. Of course there will be some shifts, and it's to be assumed they will all be in a "fair" direction, but by and large the whole exercise has a point only where the shifts would correct a substantial amount of unfairness arising from contribution imbalance.

I believe that Wales is being rebanded in 2005 and England and Scotland in 2007.

Robin

In message , Robin Cox writes

I heard, in passing, from someone in local government, that it was due in England in 2005.

Seems like jobs and money for the surveyors to me. Most properties will fall into the same "band" as their values will have risen proportionally, and my limited experience of new properties suggests that they too have been banded correctly.

The only reason to re-band is if there are many anomalies favouring property owners - they will be pretty quick to appeal if the anomaly favours the council .