Simple solution to cutting your council tax bills is live in a smaller house!!!!! The council tax system is based on house prices from 1991 so not really relevant with todays housing market in many cases!! The trick to beating council tax though if you want to have a big house is to find a smaller house & build an extension, total price often less than what you would pay on an equivalent sized house in the 1st place! That way your only paying the council tax on the original house at its 1991 valuation!! I bought a good sized 2-bed semi 5 years ago and converted it to a 3-bed last year simply by changing the internal walls about upstairs. The house is only a band b, yet to buy a similar sized 3-bed in the same area would make it a c-d banded property!
One thing to point out on the council tax front is that its not solely the councils fault for the rises. My other half works for my local council in their finance dept and she gave me a good example why there's a rise. The government has a scheme giving "people of a senior age" free bus travel, which has to be negotiated between the local councils & the bus operators to agree on a contract price. The government contribution for the scheme dosent cover the actual costs of running the scheme so the council has to find the extra cash from somewhere. Basically its the goverments fault for imposing a good idea but then not actually coughing up the cash for it themselves! You've also got the goverment insisting asylum seekers are housed, which the councils have to pay for. The list goes on and on really!!
In my opinion I think we should be able to pay the council tax from our gross pay, thus avoiding having to pay income tax upon the money we hand over to pay the council tax! Someone paying £1500 council tax would save about £330 per year this way.
