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Originally Posted by Graham
<snip>Not in the slightest! There are "fashionable areas" (even in a small city like Portsmouth) where house prices have gone through the roof whilst only a few miles away the rate of increase has been much less.
If you've been living in one of those areas since before when house prices were assessed, you could be faced with a massive rise in tax through no fault of your own.
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Yep prices can change disproportionately between neighbourhoods. Over time this does affect the accuracy of bandings. The biggest problem though is that bandings are based on a moment in time, so far back, that few can make any comparison with current reality. Thus there is perceived unfairness, even though there might still be a level of parity.
Business properties are revalued at five yearly intervals. The same should have been applied to housing. But no doubt the cost of such regular revaluations would be so administratively burdensome that the costs of council tax would escalate yet again.
*Wonders why noone complains about water rates to the same degree as council tax, yet these to are based on historic property values. Maybe it's because water bills are regulated, and can't increase too much relative to inflation. Wonders why the same regulation constraints to prevent vast increases aren't applied to council tax.