Livestream - Revaluation and reform: bringing council tax in England into the 21st century

Livestream

LIVE: The failure to revalue council tax for almost 30 years means bills bear less and less relation to property values.

So what are the options for revaluing and reforming #counciltax, and could this form part of the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda?https://t.co/tFxDwGnKFe

— IFS (@TheIFS) March 19, 2020

You can submit questions to be asked at the end of the livestream by clicking here and entering the event code #IFS.

The slides from the event are available here.

Council tax bands in England are still based on property values in April 1991 – almost 30 years ago. Moreover, the most valuable properties in 1991 (Band H) attract just 3 times as much tax as the least valuable properties (Band A), despite being worth at least 8 times as much in 1991 and probably even more now, since prices have risen most in London and the South East, where they were already highest.

Council tax is therefore both increasingly out-of-date and arbitrary, and highly regressive with respect to property values. It is ripe for revaluation and reform. And with a government apparently focused on ways to boost the economy and living standards in areas of the North and Midlands where property values are often lower and have risen by less over the last 30 years, there is no time like the present to do this.

At this event, IFS researchers will present the key findings of a new report which examines a range of possible reforms, looking at:

• The impact of reform on different local areas and types of households, and how this depends on changes to the other funding councils get;
• The potential knock on effects on property values and wealth inequality;
• And options to mitigate impacts of reform on particular groups we may be concerned about.

The full report is available here >>>