Community Charge - Implementation

Implementation

Protesters complained that the tax shifted from the estimated price of a house to the number of people living in it, with the effect of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor.

Owner-occupiers paid because they could not hide; for those in the expensive properties it cost less than rates had but for many it cost more; some renters did not pay, knowing they would be long gone when the bills arrived. Councils of towns with highly mobile populations, such as university towns, were faced with big store rooms of un-processed "gone-aways".

The initial register was greatly irregular. It was based on the rates register for "owned" houses with lots of other unreliable data such as housing benefit recipients.

The big collection issue was the 20%/100% split. People in employment had to pay 100%, students and the registered unemployed paid 20%. The nature of the shared house market meant that not even the landlord knew exactly who was living there; tenants were replaced, and may have shared a "single" room with their partner. So the local council had no idea who was living where and when.

Central government imposed "collection targets".

The charge was opposed and people sought to protest through mass protests called by the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation to which the vast majority of local Anti Poll Tax Unions (APTUs) were affiliated. In Scotland, where the tax was implemented first, the APTUs called for mass non-payment. These calls rapidly gathered some support there and even more in England and Wales, even though non-payment meant that people could be prosecuted.

As the tax neared its implementation in England, protests against the tax began to increase as unrest mounted. This culminated in a number of Poll Tax Riots. The most serious of these happened in London on 31 March 1990 – a week before the implementation of the tax – during a protest at Trafalgar Square, London, in which more than 200,000 protesters attended. There were further conflicts, but none so large as this.