Council Tax Increase - Herts24 & Cambs24 Forums

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23/02/2008, 1:47 PM

Christopher Young is not online. Last active: 23/02/2008 14:34:00 Christopher Young

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Hitchin
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Council Tax Increase

I am a little surprised to see little or no comment about reports of another inflation busting council tax increase of 4.5% for 2008/09. With inflation at 2.2% in Jan 2008 (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_economy/CPI.pdf) this would be an increase of more than twice the inflation rate.

However last year was even worse with an increase of over 3 times the rate of inflation!

Is it that people are now just resigned to the fact that the council are allowed to get away with such large increases? Certainly my wage increases don't keep pace with inflation!

Chris

Hitchin

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05/04/2008, 6:25 PM

Martin of St Albans Taxpayers Alliance

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Re: Council Tax Increase

Yes, there is a tremendous amount of apathy out there!

Most taxpayers recognise that politicians have a vested interest in a wasteful state, so feel deliberately disenchanged by "the system" that permits an alleged misappropriation of public funds (Mrs Martin's £4,000 taxi bill), inflation-busting pay rises of senior council officials, industrial-scale waste in health & education services and the continued existence of government departments whose effect is to damage the UK's interests (e.g. HM Treasury, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Department of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform).

The Taxpayers Alliance is a grassroots, non-party organisation that seeks to show the taxpayer just how "the system" rips off the taxpayer, both in terms of i) wasted tax receipts; and ii) pointlessly sacrificed opportunities. http://www.taxpayersalliance.com

The politicians will deny all of this, of course, but will probably start to think again when words like "revolution" and "civil war" start bouncing in newspapers.

Lord Snape's defence of Mrs Martins' expenses came very close to a well known historic competutous comment. He might just well have said, "Let them pay tax!"

And we all know how the French reacted to those sorts of comments.

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17/12/2008, 4:49 PM

Credit Crunched Commuter is not online. Last active: 17/12/2008 13:23:59 Credit Crunched Commuter

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Re: Council Tax Increase

I thoroughly agree that something should be done to champion the rights of the common citizen and councils' should adopt more accountability surrounding their expenditure. Especially when a vast proportion of the UK's councils were caught off guard by a number ofthe Icelandic Banks who have now, ironically, frozen their assets. Who will pay for that investment error? Who will cover that loss? Will the council write it off if they cannot reclaim more than the average£50k that is secured? Will the tax payer ultimately have to fill this deficit?

Another question is if a council needs to raise the level of council tax, what is it doing with that money and if it's being invested, how are the returns not being reflected in the payment rises that we are seeing? That's assuming that not all councils were stupid enough to invest in an Icelandic bank.

Although I'm not sure we'll see a revolution or a civil war just yet. Not that we couldn't do with one...

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