Council tax – one of Britain’s most hated taxes and one of the most regressive – has some serious problems developing with its fundamentals. A new study from the Centre for Social Justice finds that more than 1.3 million households are no longer paying council tax as local authorities fail to collect a record £6 billion a year. Failing to pay council tax can lead to a prison sentence of three months or more, but with the courts clogged up, more people are risking non-payment…

Council tax debt now represents almost a sixth of total income from the tax itself – suggesting that the charge is no longer really working. Councils resorted to bailiffs to collect debt 2.5 million times last year, up by a fifth – the cost of enforcement is skyrocketing, in turn piling more pressure on local authority tax receipts. No wonder council tax is hated by rich and poor alike, and even by many council officials…

The Labour government is mulling plans to reform council tax – probably by ditching bands and switching to a proportional tax based on the value of each property (rather than groups of properties). A leaked recording revealed Treasury Minister Darren Jones apparently wants bands to be ditched – hinting that he thought re-banding would be politically impossible (the exact reason it was always put on the back burner by the Tories). Resolution‘s Torsten Bell – now the Labour MP for Swansea West – has promoted a proportional property tax, an idea which has a lot of fans on the Labour backbenches. There’s only one problem – an IFS analysis found a proportional tax would add £1,230 to 4.2 million household bills – with council tax going up in 124 local authorities. Labour would take a massive whack in the polls if they pursued that kind of council tax reform, but can the Reeves Treasury afford not to?