Oh boy those guys at Labour never seem to learn as regards local income tax. They are now branding it unfair to adult workers who stay at home with their parents. Heaven forbid those of us who have spent most of our adult lives paying Poll Tax (based on the ability to breathe) and Council Tax (based on the ability to buy or rent property). Especially the later where the living alone discount is 25% therefore I've been paying considerable more than the couple of wage earners living in the flat next door.
Local Income Tax is based on the ability to pay. Therefore through lives cycle there will be times at present when you could get away with paying a local tax that you will pay it, ie when you are earning money and living in a household full of adults. Then there will also be times when you benefit, at times when you may find yourself out of work, or when you retire, when the current burden of council tax is too much to bear.
But of course Labour have failed to see just how unfair Council Tax has been to so many people and now that the SNP and Liberal Democrats are trying to get local taxation based on individuals ability to pay they are taking umbridge. The party of the ordinary people has long since lost that tag, they are cut off from reality and are merely putting the frighteners up people instead of looking at the wider picture.
Even accountants KPMG seem to have missed an important piece of the LIT plans of a cap on the maximum Local Income Tax bill. Labour are accusing LIT which will create savings to people on low or medium incomes who are being hit by the hike of fuel prices, food prices, various stealth tax rises introduced over the last 11 years. They are clearly forgetting that those on the lowest incomes are now pay a considerably higher proportion of their earnings in tax and the bear necessities of life now than when Blair breezed into Downing Street. They are only siding with the Tories to protect their nouveau riche supporters base and not the average family.
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Of course perhaps this is not a problem in Scotland, but removing the council tax will add another multiple of an earnings to house prices. An appalling policy that will hand a windfall to the haves (home owners) at the expense of the have nots (renters). Still, it's obviously devolved policy, and Scotland doing it first will help show that we need to find some other way of making local taxation "fairer" than by taking more of the value of our labour when we come to doing it in England.
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