Oct 12 2007
The taxman is so aggressive
I have seen a letter addressed to people who have claimed the single person discount from Council Tax. It reads:
"You currently qualify for a 25% discount on your Council tax as you are the only qualifying adult resident.
In order to ensure that the Council’s records are up to date and accurate it is necsessary to review the granting of single occupier discount at regular intervals. Can you please complete and return this form with the next 21 DAYS. Please be advised that failure to return this form will result in the loss of your current discount."
No wonder so many of us are fed up with the aggressive and hectoring state. People are expected to drop everything and fill in this form for an entitlement they have by law. They presumably have to ensure it reaches the Council offices, when placing it in the post might mean it does not reach them in time thanks to another public service that does not work. What this official letter is effectively saying emerges in my re-write below:
"You have dared to claim a discount in your Council Tax. We think you might be sharing your home with another adult. If we do not hear from you in 21 days we will levy extra tax on the basis that you are lying to us. If by any chance you are telling the truth we still intend to take your legal discount away, unless you deliver us another form promptly. Don’t think you can hide behind delay or failure of the Post office to deliver your form. If I were you I would deliver it in person to make sure."
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
The British people are servants of the state. That’s socialism, and Britain has been a socialist country since 1945.
Britons accepted the promise of cradle to grave security in exchange for giving up their rights as free citizens.
Of course, the cradle to grave security has now gone, but their rights as free citizens (to be treated as adults for example) have not returned, and never will.
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This doesn’t just happen with council tax, it also happens with almost all benefits.
What happens to someone claiming Incapacity Benefit, if they are hit by severe depression and find it impossible to open their mail if they are expected to return a form?
They lose their benefit. It is the same for DLA and many others.
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It is all about raisng money with this government. They use the criminal justice system to raise money which brings the criminal justice system in to disrepute. Everything that this government introduces seems to have a financial penalty attached.
So called safety cameras are more about raising money than road safety, figures have shown that illuminating signs telling speeders to slow down are just as effective as cameras. But of course there is no income from these signs.
The Inland Revenue now give out penalties for minor breaches of procedure, again an extra stealth tax in affect.
I have recently read on the Nanny Knows Best website about a driver smoking in his lorry’s cab being fined by a dog warden for smoking and then having a second fine imposed when he threw the butt in to the gutter. This type of pettyness just gets people’s backs up and alienates government, local authorities, police and wardens from the people they should be working for.
I suspect the agressiveness of the tax man is government target driven….funny how these target driven organisations always go after the easy targets. Classic example the CSA.
Just so it does not sound like sour grapes on my part, I don’t drive, I have never smoked and I don’t have any children.
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When I say I don’t have any children, I mean I don’t have any children under 18, I was just illustrating the point that I have never personally been affected by the CSA, I just feel it was rightly set up to pursue parents, usually fathers that did not contribute financially to their off spring, but has mainly pursued fathers that were contributing to the financial needs of their children because they were an easy target. The CSA overturned and “reassessed” arangements that the courts had previously imposed, often financially ruining decent hardworking and caring fathers often driving them to drastic action such as suicide, hence why it was known as The Central Suicide Agency by many of it’s hapless victims.
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I have noticed this more aggressive approach from councils when dealing with non-domestic rates. The problem appears to be most acute in areas where the migration of industry to foreign shores has put a significant dent in revenue streams. This factor often seems to be overlooked when a factory closes and the headline job losses attract most attention. Businesses contribute a lot in rates to an area and very rarely require a lot of council funded resources in return. As these businesses dissapear I think people will have to prepare themselves for sizeable council tax increases as our towns sadly become no more than a collection of houses with a couple of out of town retail parks thrown in.
The measures announced in the last budget to reduce the void rate relief on empty commercial properties are I suspect a measure to improve councils revenues. This was ostensibly to discourage landlords from leaving properties empty, in reality it could well mean a wrecking ball is taken to unlet industrial property and empty high st shops are converted to residential. This was to be implemented next March but I haven’t heard much about it recently. It seems a very big gamble to take with the commercial property landscape of this country and could be disastrous for the already over-geared commercial property investment sector.
Presently, in my experience, councils
are more concerned with getting money in rather than billing the correct business accurately. It can be an uphill struggle to convince them otherwise when they do this. The irony is the council’s trading standards dept is probably occupied dealing with utility companies’ inaccuruate billing and aggressive chasing, whilst their own rates dept engages in the same activity. Sorry this has turned into a diatribe on councils, it’s fuelled by my own frustration in dealing with a high-handed and self-righteous swarm of public sector bureaucrats.
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John, re the post : If I send a letter and claim it did not arrive, that is regarded as no excuse, and the law and penalties are applied to me.
If the official body posts a letter, it is “deemed to have arrived”, and I cannot use its non-delivery as an excuse.
One law for the bureaucrats, one law for us muggles ?
I reckon the government and its subs are literally treating the tax-paying people that they are supposed to be the servants of, as the ENEMY.
Alan Douglas
Reply: I agree - another good example of how they behave unreasonably towards the people they are meant to serve
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Regarding the comments by Alan Douglas.
I have experience of a similarly ridiculous scenario when a spurious County Court claim was made against me. The issuing court put insufficient postage on the claim, no-one was in, and the Postman didn’t leave a card. Therefore a judgment was issued in default and when this arrived it was the first I knew of the claim. I had the claim set aside and luckily we had documentation to support the case, the claim was without foundation, and it was struck out (this one sentence belies eight months of stress and aggravation).
My disillusion came from the fact that I had to follow the normal process to have the claim set aside. The court would make no allowance for the fact it was negligent in using insufficient postage and had therefore denied me the right to a defence. I also found it depressing that throughout, as a defendant, you’re treated as if you’re some kind of swindling chancer on the make. There’s probably some sort of complaints mechanism, but who has the time to embark on such a crusade? State institutions have got to start treating those they serve fairly and with the same, or higher, standards than they expect of the public. Unquestioning reliance on the output of computerised records also seems to be an issue.
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While this hounding of council tax payers is awful, I’d recommend you try living without a TV to see hounding in all its glory. Me, I’d sort of quite like a TV to watch on rare occasions, but can’t justify paying the licence fee for such a little-used appliance. I’m not very well off, you see, and have to consider what I spend my money on.
The result of living a TV-free life is a constant barrage of insulting letters from the TV licence people, inspectors arriving and marching around one’s home, and the constant insinuation that one is a liar. Just as bad, most people are entirely unaware of how much grief non-TV owners get, because we’re a rather small minority. Imagine being constantly accused of owning an unlicensed gun, dog or bee, and getting constant abusive letters from the bee licensing authority demanding access to your home to search for an undeclared apiary.
The fact that it’s the cost of the licence fee that effectively prevents me from owning a TV is all the more galling. That, and the fact that if I did buy a licence, my money would be going to support an organisation whose primary purpose these days seems to be propagandising left-wing ideas that I spend the rest of my life (where appropriate heh) arguing against. It’s a bit like a socialist being taxed to support The Cato Institute.
But nobody is interested, since it’s an awful law that only affects a small minority who, let’s be honest, the TV-owning majority just think are a bit weird. Really, the council tax people are positively mild and polite by comparison.
Reply: Yes, I know what it’s like as I do not have a TV in my London flat. I have complained on behalf of constituents in the same position who dislilke being treated like criminals when they have done nothing wrong, but the licence people refuse to back down or to behave reasonably.
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