Quote:
Originally Posted by nomadking
The principle behind the community charge was valid. Why should one person on their own pay the same as 6 adults living next door? It wasn't a quick fix to reduce spending.
It was widely agreed that the rates system needed changing, but nobody could agree on how.
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The ‘principle’ was deliberately oversimplified and misrepresented to justify a tax that was intended to expose Labour-run councils that tended to charge more. The adults who previously had paid one sixth of the rate on a house, now forced to pay an equal share to their sole-occupant neighbour, were meant to blame the Labour council and vote Tory instead. To make matters worse, the tax was deliberately misrepresented as a ‘community charge’, a payment for services, which was supposed to justify it being the same flat rate paid by all, with a few exceptions who were eligible for a discount.
The problems (for the Tories) were first, people saw through it and didn’t blame their local council for the level of the charge, they blamed the government for badly-constructing the system and, second, when you’re compelled to pay a public authority a contribution to its entire operating costs regardless of how much or little you use it, you aren’t paying for services, you’re paying a tax. People understood that, and looked to this new tax to behave equitably. And by design, it did not.