MORE COUNCIL TAX BANDS TO MAKE THE RICH A BAND ON THE RUN

First Published BY: People.co.uk

There are several fair tax systems available off-the-peg but Britain has yet to try on even one of them.

The richer you are the less tax you proportionately have to pay. All you need is the means to afford a crafty accountant.  

Then find a warm tax haven and pile all your money into it. Or you can whack your salary into a private company like student loans chief Ed Lester did.

That way you only have to pay corporation tax at 21 per cent rather than income tax at 50 per cent. In the meantime, we poor people on PAYE have to cough up the lion's share of the £146 billion the tax-man takes each year.

Council Tax isn't much fairer. So the hard-working labourer can pay the same as a landowner.

One has built his family a comfortable home out of his own pile of bricks while the other owns a stately pile. By contrast New York has a system of local income tax. So if you live there you pay federal tax similar to our income tax, state tax, and a city tax to fund local services.

Chancellor George Osborne now wants to ditch the 50p higher rate because with tax dodges it raises less than if he got people to pay up at 40 per cent. But he will have to find another way to make the rich pay their share. So he is studying a plan drawn up by influential Tory thinker Tim Montgomerie.

Tim reckons the tax system should fall more heavily on wealth than income so he is suggesting adding more bands to Council Tax. Under the present system all properties valued at more than £320,000 in England by 1991 prices pay Band H rate averaging £2,536.

Tim wants to add a Band I for homes worth more than £500,000, Band J for those topping £1 million and a K - which must stand for kibosh because that's what the band would do to those living in pads worth £2 million or more.

This would go some way to placate Coalition partner Vince Cable who is still wired up over the Lib Dem's plan for a mansion tax. And with 50,000 properties worth more than £2 million analysts reckon the scheme could raise £1.7 billion a year.

That should make the rich a band on the run.

READ WHAT: ERIC PICKLES ‘SECRETARY OF STATE’ SAYS ABOUT OVER-CHARGED COUNCIL TAX.

Are you paying too much Council Tax- check here?