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?

While 40 councils are on the brink of bankruptcy and outrage grows over the rise in council tax, one wonders what these councils have actually been spending taxpayers’ money on. Unsurprisingly, diversity’s the name, spending is the game…

The Taxpayers’ Alliance reveals that UK councils have splurged a whopping £51,775,800 on equality, diversity and inclusion hires since 2020, the figure ramping up by 41% in the last financial year alone. Cash strapped councils who have had to raise council taxes to ‘function’ have been among those who decided hiring ‘woke’ jobs to be a priority. Just one example is bankrupt Birmingham, where council tax is increasing by 21%, hiring an “Assistant Director of Community Services and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion” with an eye-watering average salary of £103,165. Nice work if you can get it…

Joanna Marchong of the TPA nailed it:

“With the cost of council tax soaring and the mounting debt councils are sitting on, taxpayers will be astonished by the money wasted on council non-jobs.”

The report comes after Hunt announced plans for a public sector productivity drive last week, suggesting he would tell UK councils to cut spending on consultants and diversity schemes. Whether he’ll actually deliver it or kick the can down the road like he did when he announced a crack down on woke waste across Whitehall is yet to be seen…

New data from the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) shows the average band D council tax bill in England has more than tripled to over £2,000 since its introduction in 1993 – a real terms increase of a whopping 79%. Going from a typical annual bill of £568 thirty years ago to £2,065 today…

As households grapple with record local rate rises, the TPA research reveals 244 councils, or 57% of the UK’s total, have never decreased their level of council tax. From 1993-94 to 2023-24, there were 9,462 individual council tax increases, compared to 404 freezes and just 363 cuts. In other words, the chance of those recent hikes being meaningfully reversed aren’t great.

Last night Jeremy Hunt ordered a review into public sector waste, vowing “a relentless focus on efficiency and innovation across both the public and private sectors” to ensure better value for taxpayers. He also promised to put the country “on a path” to lower taxes. With taxpayers footing the bill for woke art projects, Stonewall membership, and rainbow zebra crossings – all while seeing their bills go up – you’d hope that path is a short one. Guido suspects it’s just short enough to make it to the start of the next general election campaign…