A Message for Xmas to all Boat People ...

[klondike]

The idea was that all adults using council services would pay the same charge rather than it being a charge paid only by ratepayers and based on the value of where they lived.

IMO the councils used it as an excuse to get more money as I was in a quite high rated property and my own and my wife's community charge came to about what we were paying in rates. My son was living with us at the time so that meant our high rated house generated about 50% more than they were getting in rates. Low value properties with several adults in them would have been up by far more. I doubt many worked out much cheaper and then only single occupant properties. There would have been some sort of relief but in the main it was a tax on the poor.

There were even riots over it and it was what brought about the downfall of Margaret Thatcher.

[GrannyMac]

JBR Community Charge became known as Poll Tax. Ours worked out about the same as our rates.   Our son was a student, so paid a small amount IIRC.  Once he'd got a job, he'd have been liable for the full sum if he earned enough.   We thought it reasonably fair.  No rating system is completely fair!

[JBR]

JBR Community Charge became known as Poll Tax. Ours worked out about the same as our rates.  Our son was a student, so paid a small amount IIRC.  Once he'd got a job, he'd have been liable for the full sum if he earned enough.  We thought it reasonably fair.  No rating system is completely fair!

👍

[Michael Rolls]

first wife and I lived in a three bed semi - two reasonable incomes. Next door a widow who had to pay the same as us. Across the road five earners paying the same as us. The poll tax was a bloody good idea, poorly administered.

[klondike]

The idea was fine but it was killed by a greedy council here and probably elsewhere.

[Michael Rolls]

and also hated by those who actually were expected to stop living at the expense of others.

[klondike]

I guess they didn't see it that way. The people caught would mostly be the less well off and they got hit with a fairly stiff tax which they had never had to pay before. Regardless of any fairness it caused very widespread protest and even riots and was what caused her downfall.

Most of the high spending councils were labour and a lot of those that voted them in were either not paying rates or paying low rates and I suspect that was one of her reasons for wanting it.

[Raven]

It was put in place in Scotland a good long while before it started in England. It caused a lot of bad feelings and fury at that bloody woman.