Today’s Independent splashes on the “new poll tax” set to hit the poorest households this April but Staggers readers will already be familiar with the story.
In a piece published earlier this month, I warned that the coalition’s decision to cut the fund for council tax support (currently know as Council Tax Benefit) by 10 per cent would force millions of low-income families to pay the charge for the first time. Since the government has stipulated that current levels of support must be maintained for pensioners (who, partly owing to their greater propensity to vote, have once again been shielded from austerity), the burden will fall entirely on the working-age poor.
If this sounds a lot like the poll tax, it’s because it is. The Community Charge, as it was officially known, similarly required each household, irrespective of its income, to pay at least 20 per cent of the tax. Patrick Jenkin, the architect of the poll tax, has even accused the government of repeating the Thatcher government’s mistake. The Conservative peer told the BBC last year: “The poll tax was introduced with the proposition that everyone should pay something . . .We got it wrong. The same factor will apply here, that there will be large numbers of fairly poor households who have hitherto been protected from Council Tax, who are going to be asked to pay small sums.”
Today’s important report from the Resolution Foundation (I’d encourage you to read it in full), which Matthew Pennycook wrote about this morning, reveals that the situation is even worse than feared. Of 184 local authorities in Englands, 125 plan to introduce a new or higher payment for those on low incomes from this April. Sixty councils intend to demand a minimum payment of 8.5 per cent of a full council tax bill, while 65 plan to introduce a minimum payment of 20 per cent. As a result, many of the 2.5 million out-of-work claimants who currently pay no council tax face a tax increase of between £96 (£1.80 per week) and £255 a year (£4.90 per week), while an additional 670,000 low-paid working families face an increase of up to to £577 a year.
At present, a single parent working part-time on the minimum wage with children in childcare pays £173 a year in council tax. From April, this could rise to £577 – a 333 per cent increase (see table below). A couple with children and one working adult will see their bills rise by between £96 (a 12 per cent increase) and £304 (a 37 per cent increase).
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When the poll tax was introduced in 1989, the poor were at least assured that their benefits would rise with prices. But under George Osborne’s plan to uprate working-age benefits by 1 per cent for each of the next three years, rather than in line with inflation, their incomes will be squeezed to an unprecedented degree. The government’s impact assessment showed that the poorest tenth will lose the most in real terms (2 per cent of net income a week), while the next poorest tenth will lose the most in cash terms (£5 a week).
Those faced with the unpalatable choice of either heating their home or feeding their family are unlikely to accept stoically the first council tax bill that lands on their doormat in April. Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that the average working family will lose £165 per year, while the average non-working family will lose £215.
Confronted by these losses, which household will willingly pay hundreds of pounds in additional tax? Yet, for the sake of saving just £480m a year, the coalition intends to force councils to chase the poorest through the courts to recoup a charge they cannot afford to pay.
Confident that they can push the blame onto local authorities, ministers appear untroubled by the dramatic tax rises above. But as the poor unite in mass non-payment, they may yet come to rue their complacency.
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