Council Tax Revaluation Question

[Ruprect]

lol - no - have only been contracting for 2 yrs... so mortgage not paid off quite yet

[Troll]

I thought us contractors only live in H band houses. are you a permie?

[Ruprect]

errrrmmm yyeeeessss.... was talking about a revaluation based on property purchase... not the nationwide revaluation (which is a massive vote loser, so is undoubtably going to be timed mid term to give the electorate time to forget about it before the general election...which makes that next year then )

[Ruprect]

Surely the only indicator they should be using is property value?

Mailman

The primary reason that they can't do that is that there isn't necessarily a transaction on the property around the 4th April 1991. If I extrapolate the price back from what I paid to 1991 (based on average inflation) then it comes in lower than the band threshold, however this (apparently) not a valid way to determine the 1991 price as there was a crash in 92-93 so the 1991 prices were undoubtably higher than this extrapolated figure.

[DaveB]

Surely the only indicator they should be using is property value?

Mailman

Thats what they are doing. But rather than taking the market value they caluclate the value useing a formula based on the square footage of the property. This actually works on your favour because the market value is almost certain to exceed the value based on the formula used. There was a good deal of discussion a while back about plans to revalue all the properties in England and Wales for council tax based on the current market price rather than the calculated value from 10 years ago...

[Mailman]

Surely the only indicator they should be using is property value?

Mailman

[Ruprect]

OK, being as you lot are so good at 'interpreting' tax laws, I have a question for you re: council tax.

I bought my house last year, and following the purchase hector's henchmen came round to evaluate it for council tax as it had had an extension since it was last sold. This is standard practice that may, but not always, lead to a change of council tax band.

On the phone before the valuation hector said 'I don't think the change will affect your band', yet lo and behold following the valuation my band went up (as did my bill by about £350pa). It appears that the change has caused me to creep into the lower end of the next band up.

Anyway I decided to appeal this as I didn't think it was justified, and have a tribunal coming up. Hector sends you 'evidence' on which they make their judgement, and primarily this (I was told when I called) is based solely on the floor area (i.e. square footage) of the property, compared to similar properties and the prices they were sold for on around 4th april 1991. I asked whether number of bedrooms, state of the property, size of the garden etc made any difference and was told that it made very little difference.

Has anyone had a similar situation and appealed it? on what grounds did you make your appeal and was it successful? At the moment I'm trying to decide whether or not to bother. I must say that the whole 'square footage = value' think sounds decidedly bollox to me, but if that is really how the decision is made, then what chance have I got when it comes to the tribunal?!

Thanks in advance for any (constructive) advice.