Well, at last they've given up with the lies...

It would be more accurate to say that lots of people, including me,
felt that making the rich pay less than they did and the poor more was
somehow wrong.

 

I honestly can't see what's wrong with that. As I say above, given
income tax already taxes your ability to earn.

 

How about, "From each according to his ability..."

Nah, can't see that working.


--
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Fisher at Home: |
| Voxan Roadster Gilera Nordwest * 2 Yamaha WR250Z |
| Gilera GFR * 2 Moto Morini 2C/375 Morini 350 "Forgotten Error" |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+

 

So you would support a change to Local Government funding totally by
local income tax then?

--
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Fisher at Home: |
| Voxan Roadster Gilera Nordwest * 2 Yamaha WR250Z |
| Gilera GFR * 2 Moto Morini 2C/375 Morini 350 "Forgotten Error" |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+

 

My memory is hazy but I didn't know there was any warning of impending
events before the Argies appeared on the island. ICBW.

 

What was bad about the Poll Tax was its unenforceability. Taxation has to
be simple and cheap to collect. Unbelievable but true - Scottish councils
are still pursuing poll tax debts!!! by now they must have spent twice what
they ever collected.

 

That was not the intention or effect of the PT

 

No it didn't

Neither did Rates

Unemployed or low income people didn't pay PT or claimed rebates. As I
said, it's primary problem was unenforceability.

 

I believe you're wrong on both counts.

 

Bollocks. The rating system did not differentiate between rich and poor,
it simply victimised people on the basis of a bogus postcode lottery
called "rateable value".

It was actually much fairer to expect everyone who used local services to
pay something rather than expect householders (especially pensioners) to
subsidise the great unwashed.

The flaw, of course, was that the great unwashed expected, as usual, to get
everything for nothing and had time on their hands to organise riots rather
than do an honest days work.

 

Lets not get me started on PT. I left the fucking country rather than give
in.

 

I just didn't pay it. Told Norwich Council I paid in Bedford on the
house we owned there, told Bedford Council I paid in Norwich where I
actually lived - neither bothered checking up with the other. By the
time I moved back here the Council Tax had been introduced.

 

The main way in which this shift was seen as unfair was that
multi-occupier households, which are much more common in the poorer
income groups, were suddenly required to pay the community charge for
each member of the household, which while clearly "fairer" in the
sense of charging for services used, did increase their burden more,
whilc decreasing that of rocher families living in smaller numbers,
often in larger houses.

Well, that's not quite true. Lower earners were actually granted
reductions. But more importantly, the 'unfairness' was really, as
Colin states up there ^^, about leftward-leaning people getting
annoyed when rich folk were required to pay even less. Logic, which
clearly fits the "pay for services based on likely usage" model, goes
out of the window when it comes to class jealousy.

But the shift to community charge was less about changing the way
taxes were collected than it was trying to change the whole "local
services" model. It was intended, in the long term, to open up many of
the local service tasks to private industry, allowing consumers to
choose whether to pay their rubbish collection charges, for example,
to a council-run collection service, or to an independent operation.
This actually happened with Water, although this was already seperated
before the CC came into play.

Clearly many of the service elements were unsuitable for this kind of
approach, and the desirability of privatisation of services has taken
a knock in recent years, given what we've seen hapenning in some
industries, but this was, I believe, the long-term intention at that
time.

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (b.rogers at ifrance.com)
\`\ | /`/ DS#8 BOTAFOT#3 SbS#2 UKRMMA#13 DFV#8 SKA#2 IBB#10
`\\ | //'
`\|/`
`

 

Remember it was trialled in Scotland. The Labour councils, who claimed to be
against it, put their Stalinist credentials to the fore when it came to
implementation and collection.

 

That's not what I said.

I think it would be fair that every individual who uses local services
all pays the same amount. That I think is the only fair way of
covering local services unless you're going to charge people for the
individual services they actually use.

That said, I actually think that government and services to society
should be funded wholly out of income tax (bands of which should be
made finer and have greater coverage over range of income) and there
be no local taxation.

 

Nice typo. )

 

Do poorer families have more children in the uk?

IMHO the PT was essentially quite fair. The introduction was used by stealth
by councils to try and introduce significant overall tax rates however. In
part that was the problem and it put bills up. It was *utterly* doomed to
failure though by it unenforceability. Only a local income tax could have
had the desired effect.

 

This sort of ignores the fact that the middle classes make much more use of
local services than the lower orders.

 

Isn't social welfare a huge local cost?

 

You're either trolling or stupid. Neither merits more than a line and
a half in reply.