HOW TO BEAT COUNCIL TAX INTO THE GROUND - ask what the formula is.

• published: 14 Jan 2016
• views: 24

via YouTube Capture 14th January 2016. COUNCIL TAX is the bane of many ordinary people's existence. Non-payment results in threats, fines, Court appearances and attendant charges the Council makes for the 'inconvenience' of threatening you, and of course Debt collectors (Sheriff's Officers in Scotland). It turns out, it relies heavily on keeping the public ignorant of its inner workings. It is fickle, and it turns out COMPLETELY SECRET. Once you peel back the superficial confidence trick the Council Tax Department is the one on the back foot. Why is the formula kept secret? What does the computer calculate that is impossible to tell us? Nonsense of course. Transparency means challenges, and the Council can do without that. They basically have the starting point, the full Council Tax price. Then they make calculations allegedly that accurately rate how much discount you are able to be given, if any. However, these things used to be done by Central Government. Properly, if not fairly. Now, each and every local Council has to concoct its own cockamamie system, to calculate what discount if any an individual household is due. To do this, they tap into the HMRC system, who in turn rely on a very dodgy bunch of contractors called CONCENTRIX based in Brighton, in order to calculate all the basic numbers to do with any income, tax due, self-employment, NI (another tax!) and of course Tax Credits in the UK, a welfare benefit of sorts, depending on who you talk to. The first step, is to establish what the calculations are that the Council purport is done by the IT system they have cooked up. What inputs are there IE what are the names of all the things, the different components that they take into account. Now, what are the numbers in your particular household's case? You request all of this, as outlined above, in writing. Then, when they refuse, you ask why you are not allowed to know or to check the system of calculation - the formula - they are using. Tell them that as you do not have access to a suitable IT system, and as you need to understand what is being done, you need to know how to manually do the sums. The people you talk to in Council Tax departments up and down the UK, will simply not know. All they know is, they do a series of computerised tasks - blind basically - and the system spits out an answer. They may or may not 'adjust' this answer later - thereby making a joke of the entire process, but hey let's not complicate matters! Keep going - tell them you are surely entitled to be able to check their calculations for yourself - in other words YOU NEED TO SEE THEIR 'WORKING OUT' AS TEACHERS USED TO CALL IT. If they do not produce this, and they will kick scream and threaten you so they don't have to, you point out the VAT example - you would not be expected to pay a hidden tax you did not know the reasoning and the method of working out. This Council Tax is no different. Once quite a few people have extracted this from their local Councils, we will see they all do it similarly but differently - that is when the whole thing will crack open like a crime egg Sorry, a creme egg. Don't get ground down, at the least this will make them realise how secretive they really are. . .