Poorest people will be hit by new tax systm
The latest round of Coalition Government austerity measures are about to hit the poorest people in our local community.
From April 1 the council tax benefit system will be replaced by a local council tax support system. The government is reducing by 10 per cent the grant paid to local authorities to help residents with the costs of council tax.
Councils have the choice of absorbing the 10 per cent cut or passing it on to their poorest residents. Pensioners and some disabled people are exempt from these changes, so the impact will fall heavily on people of working age with very low incomes.
Bath and North and East Somerset have decided to pass on its shortfall.
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The new council tax support will only be paid up to a maximum of 78 per cent, whereas at present up to 100 per cent of council tax bills are paid when someone is eligible for help.
Many families on very low wages and people on benefits will have to find extra money which in some cases could amount to more than £200 extra a year.
In addition, child benefit and child maintenance will in future be counted as income which will reduce still further the amount of support many families will receive.
How much money will the council have to spend chasing some of the poorest people in the area for non-payment ?
The government is woefully out of touch with the hardship and poverty that their policies are creating.
Recently a government spokesman said that food banks should only be needed in dire emergencies because benefits ensured that nobody had to go without food.
This is false and locally more people are using food banks every week.
Many households are already struggling to cope with falling wages, reducing tax credits and benefits in the face of rising food and fuel bills.
The government promotes work as a way out of poverty and yet over 60 per cent of the people affected by the latest round of cuts are already in work.
The additional blow of reduced help with the council tax will only increase hardship and put greater pressure on local services.
Pam Richards Station Road Lower Weston, Bath
5 Comments
by MoeXXX
Wednesday, March 13 2013, 8:08PM
“Jezer, it's all gone wrong because we've just crept further and further to the right over the years. We learned lessons from the war and invested massively in huge projects like the welfare state, the NHS, human rights and physical infrastructure with the aim that no-one would ever have to suffer the same horrors again.
This led to the boom years of full employment, healthcare and education for everyone, technological progress and rising wealth across the board. Then the right-wingers (Thatcher) started to change things for the worse, and the money and all the benefits it engenders started drifting towards the privileged. The rich got bigger and bigger houses, the masses lost their opportunities, and country as a whole started to regress.
Blair made no attempt to rectify the situation, and paved the way for the current crowd of shysters to finish the job and hand over the remains of public property to their rich pals. We now live in an almost complete neoliberal society, where a very-wealthy but small minority own all the means to production, no-one is permitted anything they can't immediately pay for themselves, and the poor are almost guaranteed to stay poor for life. I almost look back fondly on the Thatcher government; compared to today's situation the 80's were pretty centrist.
When communism failed the Soviets admitted defeat, but the neoliberals are not as smart. Neoliberalism failed in 2008 and the only solution on the table is more neoliberalism. Despite the crash, the wheel is still pulling to the right. It's a terrible thing to say, but sometimes I think it'll take another major war to bang some sense back into the the country's collective heads.”
by mcupis
Monday, March 11 2013, 4:17PM
“The welfare bill is unaffordable. The public sector is also far too big. We need to go back to 1948 and return the welfare state to being a safety net, not a career choice. Of course, the sick, the elderly and the disabled need to be looked after and looked after well. But those who can take care of themselves must be made to take care of themselves, and not take advantage of a system that the previous Government loaded in their favour. And the public sector, which is 100 per cent funded by private taxation, needs to be reduced to a size that is affordable too.”
by jezer
Sunday, March 10 2013, 7:00PM
“Please understand, I am not being compacent, I do feel for the young today, having seven grandchildren. I do feel for their future, I am only grateful that as a pensioner I started work in 1964 when there was virtually zero unemployment. When we left school there was no shortage of jobs, and it was unheard of that anyone would be unemployed. What has gone wrong? In those days the UK made things, including of course Stothert and Pitt in Bath. That was seen as a last resort if all else failed. I left school at 16 on the Friday, and started work on the Monday as a management trainee at the Bath Co-operative Society in Westgate Buildings. I never had a gap year, but then I was never unemployed. I am not rich, but I can survive on my pension. Will others in the future be able to say the same?”
by bath1946
Saturday, March 09 2013, 9:14AM
“A most impressive letter Ms. Richards, i am deeply envious of the cogency of your presentation and your literacy. I would also add the effects of 974,000 unemployed under 25 youngsters as at February 2013 facing 5.1 applications for each job or ill conceived artificial job creating schemes and having to subsist on £56.25 JSA per week plus the greatly reduced benefits. Most are desperate for an independent life and if the discontent of this group is permitted to fester the social consequences could be serious.”
by Imp-Act
Friday, March 08 2013, 3:33PM
“This just common sense... of course the poor will be hit. How eles do you think the rich become rich?”