Updating post from Reddit.
Why are so many flats taxed at a higher band than houses? They are in the same area and the houses are clearly worth 2x but taxed at 2 bands lower. What's the logic? My 300k flat is at band F while nearby houses of 600k are at band D.
Council tax is assessed based on the value of the property in 1991.
A house built before 1991 would have been assessed once at the time and then never reassessed, so any changes to the property since then wouldn't have been considered.
Flats are more likely to have been built after 1991, which means that their council tax has to be assessed by taking the initial sale price (obviously including the newbuild premium) and backdating it using averages that probably aren't actually reflective of how the property would have performed if it existed in 1991.
Holy crap this has got to be the stupidest way of valuing a property I have heard of.
I imagine too many old houses would end up having to pay much higher council tax if the are properly revalued, so no government wants to touch this with a 10ft pole
Problem is trying to change it would make winners and losers. The winners probably wouldn't notice, the losers would be furious
On my road literally a 450-500k flat is one band below a 1.5-1.8million quid house.
Why? Because they’re all houses that were converted later. So that massive house with 2 extensions that’s 4x the size was based on what it was worth in 1991. The flat done later gets rebanded. My flat is E, ground floor is E and the top flat which is basically a loft conversion is a D.
The 180m2 house next door? F lmao. There’s a few Gs on the road and I think they got done by getting massive extensions and got rebanded.
So essentially our property is paying for 4 people living in 3 flats over double the family of 4 next door who are millionaires. Or even better the family on the other side is a single widowed pensioner on pension credit who doesn’t even pay most of her council tax as she’s “too poor”. It’s a five bedroom house worth at least 1.5mill! I find it hard not to be bitter she’s getting 5 figures in benefits a year when I help her with her shopping when she’s sitting on a property worth more than someone on a top 10% salary can earn in 25 years. The whole council tax system is useless. I don’t get why someone with such a massive house gets a massive reduction so someone else on the same road pays thousands to live in a 1b flat. They really need to sort council tax out, if you can’t afford it then sell and move tbh. Mental a 5b 7 figure house gets a discount. And don’t even need to be on pension credit. In my council a minimum wage worker in a 1b owes more in CT than a couple of pensioners on state pension in a multimillion quid house.
Same happened with my parents, their house is band E and it’s one of only 3 in a road of 100+ houses. Why? Because in 1991 the owner had already done a kitchen extension. Now 90% of the road has and they’re all still band D. My dad appealed and lost. The house on the corner is twice the size and also band E lol. It’s been years and he’s still livid about it. Yet I’m banded the same as his house and my flat under half the size of his house! And worth only 60%.
My house is around 2-3 hands higher than a €5m home a few streets away.
It's crazy
You can request your property be reassessed. They will change your neighbour's tax bands too tho. Deploy this at your leisure/peril
It would also just be a loss. The government would spend a small fortune revaluating every property to find out that for the vast majority they are in the correct banding.
Is it ever possible to request a downward reassessment for the flat claiming nearby houses are lower?
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The latter is an extremely british desire
"Sir, you forgot to give us homework" vibes
Yes, I did it and managed to bring my council tax from a band C to band B. I argued that the flat directly above me with the exact same size and layout (so same value) was a band B. They didn’t even come to check anything they just switched me over.
Lucky they did that instead of putting your neighbour up!
True. But then again I live in a studio flat (I stressed this in my application) so I doubt a studio flat would ever be band C, it was clearly a bad valuation from the get go.
You can request a reassessment. However, if your argument is based on the council tax band of neighbouring properties being lower, they might choose to raise the band on the neighbouring properties rather than lowering the band on yours. If that happens, you won't have many friends in the neighbourhood anymore.
Yes. There’s a MSE article about requesting this.
You should try and do like for like, rather than with a house. If it’s a flat you would look for one as close as possible, preferably in the same building. Comparing flats to houses generally doesn’t work with the VOA.
Because the flats were built more recently.
The houses were probably worth £200k or less when the bands weere first done
They don’t value new builds simplistically like that … they look back historically and find similar properties and work from those.
In theory. Not in practise I’d argue
If they don’t then you get your property revalued … but if it’s a new estate in a new area then there is wiggle room for them to claim it’s better/worse than elsewhere … ask for the evidence of their survey conclusion … appeal … etc
Oh no I’m in the other side if this. I’m in a huge Victorian house band a lol
Me too
FYI you can challenge the council tax bandings at tribunal, it's worth doing as they are absolutely insane in some areas, it's all because there hasn't been a re-valuation since the 90s and any attempt at doing one is electoral suicide.
My dad used to work for the valuation office, and the senior valuer there once got upset because his house was in a lower council tax band that my dad's at the time, despite him being a junior valuer... So, he applied to have his council tax band increased! That's the madness that goes on. Some people genuinely see their council tax banding as a sign of prestige and aspire to be in a higher band than their neighbours. The UK is mental.
Band F seems excessively high for a flat. Mine is band C, the same as quite a few three bed semi detached houses in my town. I can at least sort of see the logic there, as I'm town centre and they're ex-council estates a few miles out.
council tax is a regressive tax, i personally dont think its fairly priced but i guess they wont ever change it because it brings them alot of revenue
Want to live in a house‽ Give us some money!
want to drive? Give us money? want to make money, give us money...the list goes on lol
Much like business rates (or any other tax) properly reforming or rebanding is too politically challenging so is left to drift in to non sensibility
It won't ever change because the people who will be most negatively affected have the money and influence.
could be worse, could be the poll tax
they'll do anything and everthing other than tax the super wealthy
council tax is the one no one gets away from, even the super wealthy as it's on the property and isn't means tested.
To have a functioning society everyone has to pay their share
Although there is a top rate which isn’t substantially higher than the normal semidetached house rates and as councils can set it themselves and do it based off need for things they pay for in their budget there exist things like the London borough of Westminster charging less for its top rates than most more far flung towns D rates…
So whilst the super rich don’t escape entirely it’s not like they are actually paying their fair share based on the value of their property
This government needs to reband council tax for houses and create more bands. An easy way to generate more tax. And fairer.
People live in 4 storey £10mil houses in Kensington paying the same as me in an ex council flat. Bonkers.
Or you remove bands all together and you have to pay say 1% percentage of the vaule of the house.
Easy
It's because flats are overpriced when sold so when you backdate it to 1991 you end up with a much higher banding.
> What's the logic?
Good luck finding any logic in the 1991 valuations.
There isn't any. They were "drive by" valuations, which is why, on the part of the street I live on, you can find identical (literally - same size, number of rooms and layout) spread across bands B, C and D. (The band B house is also the only one with a garage rather than allocated parking.)
Council tax and valuations is an utter mess, but no politician has the guts to change or fix it because upsetting the people who will lose out will cost them some votes.
The Welsh government appears to have the cojones to atleast try - both revaluation and a set of higher bands but, as you say, whilst it will likely be much fairer I don’t see them being given much credit (and indeed England will be fearful that it’s transmissible across the border)
The view?