A senior trade union official has said that the proposed rises in council tax would only be "tinkering around the edges" and called for the tax to be scrapped. The Daily Record reported last week that one in four Scots could face a 22.5 per cent rise in council tax. The plans were revealed in a leaked paper from local authority body Cosla.
No final decision has yet been made on the plans and it is unclear when the consultation will take place. Technical changes to the calculations behind council tax - called 'multipliers' - have been proposed. A similar plan led to big rises for people in band E, F, G and H properties in 2017.
Deputy general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) Dave Moxham said the organisation supports the increases, but the system must be scrapped and replaced.
He said: “We do need the council tax scrapped – and apparently we have most political parties that agree with that – but no action has been taken now for years and that action needs to start.
“What the Scottish Government, what Cosla are doing at the moment is tinkering around the edges to try and make the system that we’ve got more progressive, because it does need to be more progressive.” He added: “It really is a sticking plaster measure and we need more radical action.”
Moxham said the proposed increase is “on balance” more progressive than the current system, but it does “catch” some people with relatively low incomes in higher value homes.
The STUC proposes an expansion to the council tax reduction scheme, which would support those struggling with increases to their payments But Moxham admitted this would be “terribly complicated” because the current system is “very bad”.
Council services in recent years have been struggling under the weight of real-terms cuts to funding with local authorities engaging in an annual battle with the Scottish Government over funding.
The situation has been made worse by rising inflation in the past 18 months. Moxham predicted a “grim” couple of years ahead if changes are not made to the current tax system.
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