Scottish councils are due nearly £1 billion in unpaid council tax. Some of the debt dates back to 1983 but £109 million of the total relates to the last financial year alone.
Local authorities were due £1.959 billion in council tax last year and by the end of March had collected £1.85 billion of this. This gave an average collection rate of 94.4% or 0.2% up on the previous year. But within the average, collection rates carried from 90% in Glasgow to 97.6% in Perth and Kinross - the authority with the highest collection rate.
Officials said 13 out of 32 councils had improved collection rates on the previous year, one council stayed the same and 18 showed slight decreases - with 11 of those remaining above the Scottish average.
Since 1993 the total amount of council tax billed in Scotland has been £22.359 billion of which £21.457 billion has been collected.
Wouldn't it be far easier and administratively cheaper to have a tax collected by HMRC? Even a central office for chasing up non-payers would be far more cost effective.
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I don't know what the figure for this is because to my knowledge no one has collated it, but in my (informed) opinion a lot of these ''arrears'' will actually be technical - people who are entitled to full or partial council tax benefit but who, for whatever reason, fall foul of the beuarocracy involved in ''claiming'' a benefit which no one disputes they are entitled to.
The rules are like a labyrinth and they also prevent many people getting housing benefit and thus falling into rent arrears, some lose their homes.
The system is frankly moronic (although to be fair some of the claimants who don't bother to claim are morons too).
The sooner we get powers over these things the better.
Of course a local income tax would do away with that problem and would ensure that those who were working payed their way too.
Thanks for that information Observer. I do know a couple of people who just won't apply for this even although their income is small.
I hinted about a LIT when I suggested HMRC do the collection - glad you picked up on it.
But of course I doubt if Westminster would allow us to look after our own collections.
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