[6][7][8] An area that is facing growing attention is the number of households that are falling into arrears with their Council Tax payments.
[9] The ordinary route for councils to chase unpaid debts is to apply to a magistrates' court for a liability order.
There may be precepting authorities for special purposes that cover an area as small as a few streets or as large as an entire county.
This is then divided by the number of nominal Band D properties in the authority's area (county, district, national park, etc.)
Each local authority sets a tax rate expressed as the annual levy on a Band D property inhabited by two liable adults.
Because of the surge in house prices over the late 1990s and early 2000s, more than a third of properties in Wales found themselves in a band higher than under the 1991 valuation.
Some properties were moved up three or even four bands with consequent large increases in the amount of Council Tax demanded.
Some dwellings are automatically exempt from Council Tax liability; these are officially organised into a number of distinct classes.
Though it is often concluded that the full Council Tax charge must, therefore, be based on two or more adults being resident at a property, this is not strictly true.
[22] As part of the National Fraud Initiative, every other year, the Audit Commission analyses metadata deriving from Council Tax accounts together with the full electoral register to produce lists of people it believes should be subjected to an investigation on the basis that there is a risk that a discount is being received when an adult who does not fail to be disregarded is actually resident in the dwelling.
Many local authorities choose to use similar or identical rules to the former statutory rebate schemes, while others took the opportunity to levy a small level of tax on people with low incomes.
These were applied to the Council Tax account in advance of the bill being delivered to the claimant, effectively creating a discount.
However, the schemes were administered by the local authority responsible for producing the relevant Council Tax bill.
Though the funding was provided by central government, the Council Tax bill it rebated was paid to the local authority.
Under these latter application schemes, claimants would often contact the responsible central government department (for example, by making a benefit claim), who would then forward the details to the local authority.
However, no reduction was imposed if the claimant or their partner needed substantial care; this qualification was met if, and only if, the claimant was: No contribution was expected from non-dependants who would themselves qualify for Council Tax benefit, were not counted towards the number of residents liable for Council Tax (for example, due to being a student), were normally resident elsewhere, or were not adults.
Council tax has been criticised as regressive, as it is not based upon the occupants ability to pay, and for placing a higher burden on lower earners.
The groups and academics stated that council tax needed reform based on homeowners’ ability to pay.
John Wilson MSP presented an Enforcement of Local Tax Arrears (Scotland) Bill on 19 March 2010 in order to try to reduce this collection time from 20 to 5 years.
[30] The Bill received royal assent on 25 March 2015, and as detailed in section 1 of the Act, all Community Charge and associated liabilities were extinguished in Scotland as of 1 February 2015.
[32] Once a liability order has been granted, then, unlike Scotland, there is no limit in legislation as to how long the Council Tax arrears remain outstanding.
This allows a local authority to chase debts many years after the original liability order was granted.
[34] An edition of the current affairs programme Tonight with Trevor McDonald on 26 January 2007[35] investigated whether millions of homes had been placed in the wrong band in the original 1991 valuation.
[37] There had been no information published on how many have been successful in obtaining a reduced banding until 22 November 2008 when the Daily Telegraph, in a news article about the campaign by Martin Lewis, stated that in the past year 97,563 properties in England and Wales had been rebanded, with 69,695 of those down-graded.