It's all in the language.

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Originally Posted by Deeranged

No, I was living in England at the time. Enlighten me.

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Despite living in England I would have thought that the reason why the Community Charge was brought in to replace the flawed rates system had reached darkest England.
In the early 1980’s there was a rates revaluation in Scotland which resulted in the rateable value of each property in Scotland increasing by a factor of 2.93.
This meant that the poundage charged should have fallen by the same 2.93 factor to ensure that the amount paid by each ratepayer remained the same.
However at the setting of the rates at the first financial year after the 2.93 times increase in rateable value unscrupulous local councils including the left wing Labour run Dundee City Council took the opportunity to increase the rates by an inflation busting increase to pay for all their pet projects including the twining with Nablus in Palestine. More free trips for Dundee City Councillors to Nablus paid for by the ratepayers in Dundee.
Scotland was the first country in the U.K. to have a rates revaluation. There was an outcry throughout Scotland about the underhand dealings by some Scottish local authorities to fleece property owners throughout Scotland by increasing the poundage paid and then blame the rates revaluation for the increase . However the ratepayers were not a gullable as these dozy Councillors thought they were.
For example if the rateable value increased by a factor of 3 then the poundage paid should have be one third of the previous amount charged. eg, the rateable value of a property was £200 and the poundage paid was 90p in the £. That means that the rates bill for that year would be 200 x 90p which equates to £180.
The rateable value increases by a factor of 3 to £600. The poundage paid reduces to one third of 90p in the £ to 30p in the £.
That means that the rates bill would be 600 x 30p which equates to £180.
However unscrupulous councils like Dundee City Council reduced the poundage from 90p in the £ to 40p in the £ resulting in a rates bill of £240 which was £60 more than the previous year and an increase of 33.3%.
People living in council houses also paid rates but it was included in the their weekly rent so it was not so obvious to council house tenants.
As a result something had to be done and the Community Charge was brought in where each adult living in a property was charged a set amount each year.
I was certainly a lot fairer as previously four adults all working and living in a house paid the same rates as a retired person living on their own in the same size of property. The rateable value system was a tax on trying to better yourself.

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Originally Posted by islaydarkblue

Despite living in England I would have thought that the reason why the Community Charge was brought in to replace the flawed rates system had reached darkest England.
In the early 1980’s there was a rates revaluation in Scotland which resulted in the rateable value of each property in Scotland increasing by a factor of 2.93.
This meant that the poundage charged should have fallen by the same 2.93 factor to ensure that the amount paid by each ratepayer remained the same.
However at the setting of the rates at the first financial year after the 2.93 times increase in rateable value unscrupulous local councils including the left wing Labour run Dundee City Council took the opportunity to increase the rates by an inflation busting increase to pay for all their pet projects including the twining with Nablus in Palestine. More free trips for Dundee City Councillors to Nablus paid for by the ratepayers in Dundee.
Scotland was the first country in the U.K. to have a rates revaluation. There was an outcry throughout Scotland about the underhand dealings by some Scottish local authorities to fleece property owners throughout Scotland by increasing the poundage paid and then blame the rates revaluation for the increase . However the ratepayers were not a gullable as these dozy Councillors thought they were.
For example if the rateable value increased by a factor of 3 then the poundage paid should have be one third of the previous amount charged. eg, the rateable value of a property was £200 and the poundage paid was 90p in the £. That means that the rates bill for that year would be 200 x 90p which equates to £180.
The rateable value increases by a factor of 3 to £600. The poundage paid reduces to one third of 90p in the £ to 30p in the £.
That means that the rates bill would be 600 x 30p which equates to £180.
However unscrupulous councils like Dundee City Council reduced the poundage from 90p in the £ to 40p in the £ resulting in a rates bill of £240 which was £60 more than the previous year and an increase of 33.3%.
People living in council houses also paid rates but it was included in the their weekly rent so it was not so obvious to council house tenants.
As a result something had to be done and the Community Charge was brought in where each adult living in a property was charged a set amount each year.
I was certainly a lot fairer as previously four adults all working and living in a house paid the same rates as a retired person living on their own in the same size of property. The rateable value system was a tax on trying to better yourself.

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My mistake, I was living in Germany not England at the time of the poll tax introduction which is why I knew nothing about it.

Anyway none of what you've written explains why it was imposed on Scotland before the rest of the UK.

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Originally Posted by Deeranged

My mistake, I was living in Germany not England at the time of the poll tax introduction which is why I knew nothing about it.

Anyway none of what you've written explains why it was imposed on Scotland before the rest of the UK.

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The poll tax was introduced into Scotland because it was the Scottish ratepayers who were protesting about the large increase in rates due to revaluation.
The Scottish Tories also thought that it would be a vote winner and endorsed the poll tax.
The poll tax was a fairer system, before the poll tax, I was paying £96 / month rates, with the poll tax, my wife and I were paying ,
£54/month.
I am like you, disillusioned with the S N P, one of the main reasons being renaging on the local income tax, which was in the 2009 manifesto.
At last we had a political party thinking outside the box, and it was a system that was proportional to your income.
Since the SNP ditched the local income tax, now forever more we have another unfair system which is a property tax, based on where you live and the value of your house, your income is not considered.

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Originally Posted by deecom

The poll tax was introduced into Scotland because it was the Scottish ratepayers who were protesting about the large increase in rates due to revaluation.
The Scottish Tories also thought that it would be a vote winner and endorsed the poll tax.
The poll tax was a fairer system, before the poll tax, I was paying £96 / month rates, with the poll tax, my wife and I were paying ,
£54/month.
I am like you, disillusioned with the S N P, one of the main reasons being renaging on the local income tax, which was in the 2009 manifesto.
At last we had a political party thinking outside the box, and it was a system that was proportional to your income.
Since the SNP ditched the local income tax, now forever more we have another unfair system which is a property tax, based on where you live and the value of your house, your income is not considered.

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Local income tax is interesting. If you work in Perth and live in Dundee which local authority area is entitled to your tax? Take it to an extreme situation. Everybody works in Perth nobody works in Dundee. Allocate the local income tax element based on place of work, Perth does really well Dundee gets nothing. Vice versa if you use place of residence as the determining factor. I think property taxes are essential, but that's because I don't think I have seen an alternative that looked workable. Maybe people who have lived and worked abroad in property that they owned abroad could help explain other ways to raise taxes locally.

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Originally Posted by BCram

Local income tax is interesting. If you work in Perth and live in Dundee which local authority area is entitled to your tax? Take it to an extreme situation. Everybody works in Perth nobody works in Dundee. Allocate the local income tax element based on place of work, Perth does really well Dundee gets nothing. Vice versa if you use place of residence as the determining factor. I think property taxes are essential, but that's because I don't think I have seen an alternative that looked workable. Maybe people who have lived and worked abroad in property that they owned abroad could help explain other ways to raise taxes locally.

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No government allowed a local authority to collect a local income tax, but as soon as we had a Scottish Parliament, that changed.
The problem was always, how do you collect the taxes?
The local income tax was a fairer system, as it was proportional to your income.
I spoke to Stuart Hosie a few years ago and asked him to clarify a few points about the system, which he duly did, but at the same time , he said that they were in discussion with other parties.
I smelt a rat then, less than a year later they renaged on the local income tax.

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Originally Posted by BCram

Local income tax is interesting. If you work in Perth and live in Dundee which local authority area is entitled to your tax? Take it to an extreme situation. Everybody works in Perth nobody works in Dundee. Allocate the local income tax element based on place of work, Perth does really well Dundee gets nothing. Vice versa if you use place of residence as the determining factor. I think property taxes are essential, but that's because I don't think I have seen an alternative that looked workable. Maybe people who have lived and worked abroad in property that they owned abroad could help explain other ways to raise taxes locally.

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There is a simple solution.
Scrap Council Tax and bring in a local sales tax. Other countries such as America manage to have a local sales tax with no problems.
At present local authorities throughout Scotland receive 76% of the income from Holyrood via the Barnett Formula with the remaining 24% from Council Tax and charges imposed by local councils such as car parking, fees for planning applications etc.
People living in Invergowrie and Monifieth doing their shopping in shops and supermarkets in Dundee would pay a local sales tax which would go into the Dundee City Council coffers.
On Islay council taxpayers are hit with a double whammy. We have a three weekly uplift of our General Waste bins with no food waste bin scheme in place because the Argyll and Bute councillors and bosses are too lazy to put the scheme in place. The island of Barra with a resident population of 1,000 has a food waste bin scheme in place but the only part of the Argyll and Bute Council area that has a food waste bin scheme in operation is Helensburgh because its population is higher than the minimum population recommended by the Scottish Government for introducing a food waste bin scheme. The rest of the Argyll and Bute Council area have stinking General waste bins during the warmer summer months.
Thanks to the Scottish Government ‘flagship’ Small Business Bonus Scheme (SBBS) businesses with a rateable value of less than £18,000 do not pay business rates but they have to pay for the uplift of their business waste.
In 2014 I received a ‘tip off’ that 69 self catering properties on Islay which had registered under the SBBS were not paying for the uplift of their business waste.
At the end of June 2015 I spoke to the Head of Law and Governance at Argyll and Bute Council about this fraud. He told me to give him the name and addresses of these properties registered under the SBBS but not paying for their business waste and he would investigate.
I told him that it was not the job of a council taxpayer to do the council’s ‘dirty work’ for them. It should not be too difficult to cross reference businesses registered for SBBS but not paying for the uplift of their business waste against their website advertising their self catering property for holiday lets.
I heard nothing more about this until I happened to attend an Islay Community Council meeting at the end of August 2019 where Councillor Robin Currie announced that Argyll and Bute Council had lost £76,000 as a result of businesses not paying for the uplift of their business waste. I told the meeting about me advising the Head of Law and Governance at the end of June 2015 about this fraud but nothing was done about it.
As usual the long suffering Argyll and Bute Council Tax payers have to pay for this fraud through increased Council Tax payments,
However if the Argyll and Bute council staff in the finance department carried the job they are employed to do this shortfall of £76,000 would never have happened.
Yet more local authority incompetence.



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I like the idea of a local sales tax, keeps the tax where the cash is spent, but can't see how it would work in Scotland - too many rural areas where there would be significantly less sales than the nearby urban areas where the teuchters tend to travel to to buy stuff.

The rest of Islay's post was descending into unnecessary Scottish Government bashing and irrelevant specific examples of how Islay operates so I didn't read it.

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Originally Posted by Deeranged

I like the idea of a local sales tax, keeps the tax where the cash is spent, but can't see how it would work in Scotland - too many rural areas where there would be significantly less sales than the nearby urban areas where the teuchters tend to travel to to buy stuff.

The rest of Islay's post was descending into unnecessary Scottish Government bashing and irrelevant specific examples of how Islay operates so I didn't read it.

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That is your loss.
With a local sales tax if people have a holiday in the Argyll and Bute Council area anything they purchase including the cost of their holiday accommodation, the local sales tax element of their purchases is handed over to Argyll and Bute Council.
In August 1987 we had a holiday in Limassol in Cyprus. At that time every time you made a purchase either in the shops or eating out included in the bill was a 5% CTO (Cyprus Tourist Organisation) tax. The money raised was used to build new hotels and holiday accommodation in the south of the island. After Cyprus was split in two there were few hotels in the south of Cyprus with most of the hotels for tourists etc being situated in Northern Cyprus which was now controlled by Turkey.
Famagusta which was the main holiday resort for holidays in Cyprus prior to the partition of the island is now situated in Northern Cyprus.