Council Tax is the system of local taxation used in England, Scotland and Wales to part fund the services provided by local government in each country. (In Northern Ireland, the form of local taxation is rates.) It was introduced in 1993 by the Local Government Finance Act 1992, as a successor to the unpopular Community Charge. The basis for the tax is residential property, with discounts for single people. As of 2011, the average annual levy on a property in England was £1,196.
Read more about Council Tax: Organisation, Calculation, How Council Tax Is Spent, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words council and/or tax:
“Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sale there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)