Alex Miller
The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) will initiate a campaign to abolish the local council tax wuith a mass demonstration in Glasgow on April 24, and with the presentation of bill in the Scottish Parliament by SSP MSP Tommy Sheridan.
In the late 1980s, the mass campaign of non-payment of British Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's poll tax ended her political career. In a knee-jerk reaction to the defeat of the poll tax, Thatcher's successor, John Major, introduced the local council tax.
Although the council tax is less onerous than Thatcher's poll tax, it is still grossly unfair on the low-income people.
In an article on the SSP's web site, Alan McCombes, editor of the Scottish Socialist Voice, the SSP's weekly paper, gives the following example to illustrate how unfair the council tax is: "John and Anne live in a modest semi-detached home in Glasgow with their three young children. Anne stays at home to look after their three-month-old son. John works as a porter in a local hospital where he is paid £5 an hour. John has to work for six weeks to pay his annual council tax bill of £1141.
"Jack and Bridget live in a detached home with their two children. Bridget is a high-flying council executive earning £90,000 a year. Jack is the first minister of the Scottish Parliament with a salary of £118,000 a year. Jack has to work five days to pay his council tax bill of £1545."
The "Jack" in the illustration is actually Scotland's Blairite premier, Jack McConnell.
Because the council tax is based on property values, and can vary dramatically from region to region (poorer regions requiring a higher level of local services and so footing a higher overall bill), it can throw out some grotesque iniquities.
Scotland's top earner in 2002, Sir Ian Woods, raked in £600 million in salary, bonuses and stock market wheeling and dealing last year. Woods lives in mansion in Aberdeenshire.
"Sir Ian, has to work for 50 seconds to pay his council tax bill of £1838", observes McCoombes.
The central plank of the SSP's hugely successful 2003 election campaign was a pledge to replace the Tory council tax with an income-based Scottish Service Tax (SST), developed by Paisley University economists Geoff Whittam and Mike Danson.
As explained in the SSP's election manifesto, the devolved Scottish Parliament has no powers to change top rate taxation, corporation tax, or value added tax, but it does have the power to introduce a new system of local taxation.
The SST would be set at a uniform rate across Scotland, with the revenues allocated to local councils on the basis of need. Under the SST, all income under £10,000 would be exempt from the tax. All income between £10,000 and £30,000 will be taxed at a rate of 4.5%; all income between £30,000 and £50,000 will be taxed at a rate of 15% and all income between £50,000 and £90,000 will be taxed at a rate of 18%. All income above above £90,000 will be taxed at a rate of 20%.
The SSP estimates that 77% of people in Scotland would be better off under the SST, 7% would be neither worse-off nor better-off, while the most affluent 16% of the population would be worse off.
The automatic exemption for those earning less than £10,000 would especially help those Senior Citizens living on state pensions.
The aged-care organisation Help The Aged estimates that currently up to 50% of pensioners fail to claim any council tax benefit entitlements because of the stigma associated with the degrading means test.
Because the SST would involve replacing the current bureaucratic nightmare of the Council Tax with an easy-to-administer tax on income, it would actually save at least £108 million per annum in local authority expenditure — money that could be used to tackle the poverty that blights 21st century Scotland.
The economists who devised the SST point out that since the 1980s the total income taken from the poorest fifth of the population has risen in comparison to the tax burden of the richest fifth.
It is likely that the Labour Party, which failed to lift a finger against the poll tax, and which currently implements the council tax in most local authorities in Scotland, will block Sheridan's bill. As Sheridan said three years ago during an earlier debate in the Scottish Paliament on the SST proposal: "Over the last 21 years the gap between rich and poor has grown to an obscene level, which makes a mockery of Mr Blair's utterances about the class war being over. Tony does not like talking about class warfare because he is too busy executing it on behalf of the rich and powerful".
For more on the campaign visit the SSP website or <http://www.scrapthecounciltax.com>.
From Green Left Weekly, April 21, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.