Stephen Williams' views on the Council Tax
The Liberal Democrats believe council tax is fundamentally unfair and should be abolished. As council tax is unrelated to people's ability to pay, it hits people struggling on low and modest incomes hardest. It's a scandal that the poorest 20% of pensioners pay on average nearly 6 times more in council tax, as a share of income, than the richest 20% of non-pensioners.
In its place, Liberal Democrats propose a tax that is related to people's ability to pay - a local income tax, as operates in countries such as the USA, Sweden, Japan and Switzerland. This is a much fairer idea, and has been proven to work. We have published how this would work, and these detailed plans are on our website - www.axethetax.org.
Our local income tax will be administered and collected by the Inland Revenue, alongside national income tax. This means local councils will not be involved in collecting local taxes, saving over £300 million on bureaucracy every year. So the local income tax is both more efficient and fairer.
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