I live in the United Kingdom and, as with many countries, over hundreds of years our governments have created various methods to take money from us which they call tax. There are a plethora of taxes which now exist including income tax, national insurance, stamp duty, Value Added Tax (VAT) and capital gains tax to name just a few.
The actual concept of the system of taxation isn't an entirely bad one. Let's be honest we all need public services of some kind and taxation, in part, does go to funding these services. So the idea that we pay some of our money to the government in order to receive services we need has some merit.
Mass Magical Money Printing - Sorry I Mean Quantitative Easing!
However, people should never be under the impression that taxation is the main source of income for governments, it is not. At least not in most Western countries. You'll be surprised what a quick phone call from the government to the Bank of England (BoE) can achieve. Yes, that's right the Bank of England can produce millions and millions of pounds out of thin air when it's needed, some of it even turns up in the government bank account. And in recent years as the societal corruption gets worse and worse the money printing machine at the BoE has been switched on with alarming regularity.
Governments and central banks along with the main private banks and huge corporations, what we should term the Cartel, have created magical money to fund the most hideous of ventures such as the wholly unnecessary Iraq war or to bail out huge private banks when they mismanaged their funds on a perversely epic scale and drove their organisations into the ground. So it's not as if the money printing press has actually been used for positive purposes.
The Poor Laws and the Introduction of Council Tax - Make the Poor Pay More
If that wasn't bad enough hundreds of years ago the government in my country introduced another tax which had to be paid simply because you live in a property, today it's called Council Tax. It was introduced around 1536 under the deceptive Poor Laws that were designed to relieve poverty but now only creates more poverty - the irony.
The law eventually developed into the rates system which applied to the size of the property you lived in. If you had a big house you would pay more rates, if you had a smaller house you would pay less. The idea was that the money collected from this tax would be used for local services including, unbelievably, paying for the police and fire services - because central government doesn't have money for that!
In the 1980's the government then scrapped the old system and introduced what was the Poll Tax, where everyone paid the same amount regardless of the size of your property. This caused widespread anger which erupted into civil unrest and outright rioting. Eventually the Poll Tax was scrapped and the old rates system was reintroduced, now known as Council Tax. And that has been the way ever since.
The point is no one should be paying Council Tax - it is just an instrument to grab more money from citizens. Central government has way more money than it needs to fund local services and it certainly doesn't need an entirely separate tax to provide local services. Council Tax is a deception from start to finish and it is unlawful.
(Council Tax campaigner Richard Vobes explaining the Council Tax scam)
If you think about it from another angle for a moment why on earth should anyone pay a tax to simply live in a home? You are simply being taxed because you have a roof over your head. Shelter is one of the basic human needs, we all need shelter. But in my country the government says they will impose an extra tax on your basic human necessity of shelter. Council Tax is the most perverse of all the taxes in existence.
As for the whole human rights nonsense, what's human rights legislation done for anyone when governments and local authorities are stealing millions and millions of pounds from people everyday and making their lives desperately miserable?
Council Tax Enforcement - Grotesque Perversity
The enforcement of Council Tax is when you discover things get really sinister. The human minds that have created the enforcement process is a sickening example of how corrupt the human race can become. Council Tax enforcement is the fusion of the criminal law and the civil law. It is designed so that the ordinary citizen can not work it out. Many years ago I completed a law degree but managed to resist entering the profession fortunately. However, even a law degree graduate would struggle to work out the very creative and complex legal structure that has been established around Council Tax. It is designed to be so complex that you give up trying to work it out and pay up anyway to avoid legal consequences.
However, when you really do your research in to Council Tax, and my word you are going to have to undertake extensive research, you will eventually learn that it is nothing else other than a scam to defraud people of lots of money. Fortunately there are more committed and braver people than me who have done their research and have fought their councils all the way. You see Council Tax is an unlawful tax and no one should be paying it. Sadly most do because they are frightened of getting into trouble if they don't pay up. I haven't paid Council Tax for five years now and never intend to pay it again. I am currently in the process of checking out the legal viability of issuing a County Court claim for the recovery of money that I historically paid in Council Tax.
To give you an idea of why Council Tax is a scam let me explain. If you don't pay your tax you get a letter from the council reminding you to pay, giving you usually around 14 days to pay. If after that you still haven't paid you get a summons letter saying pay up or else the council will go to the local magistrates court and get a liability order demanding you pay up or else. Take note the 'summons' is not a court order and just a letter from the council, it has no legal effect to summons anyone.
If you let it get that far you will then receive what the council calls a 'liability order' in the post. However, the so called liability order is nothing more than a letter from the council. Legal Orders can only even be issued by a court. Ask the court or the council to provide you with this order and they just refer you back to the letter from the council. Liability orders do not exist. At this stage all the council has done is literally hire a room at the magistrates court which you can attend. You will then go into the room and a man or woman from the council will be sat at a table, no bench of justices involved, asking you to set up a payment plan. That is all that happens at that stage.
If you are brave enough to not pay, as I have done, over the next couple of years or so you will then receive letters and visits from debt collectors pretending to be bailiffs demanding you pay the money. The deception continues. Never let these people in when they visit and always keep your doors locked, they can not force entry. Ask the debt collector for the liability order, therefore the proof that the debt exists, and they can not provide you with a court order. They are in effect acting ultra vires, beyond the powers of the court.
Keep pushing back and in the end they will give up and return the account back to the council. The council then have a whole host of things they can do to scare you into paying including threat of imprisonment and rendering you bankrupt. Keep asking for the elusive liability 'order' and the summons 'order', documents which gives them this supposed right to demand this money but they won't give it to you because neither exist. Make a Data Subject Access Request to the council and the magistrates court under the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR demanding a copy of the liability order, not a letter from the council, and they won't provide it as it doesn't exist.
However, one year ago the game changed. I was delighted to see the judgement of the court in a High Court ruling involving the case of Leighton v Bristow and Sutor (2023). This case has confirmed that debt collectors or enforcement agents can not demand money from people for council tax simply because the council has instructed them to do so. They must have a valid court order, which is the only source of their powers as enforcement agents.
The enforcement agents and debt collectors have a legal obligation to check the legal authority they are working under. In the case of Leighton despite the Claimant and the judge asking for a copy of the 'Liability Order' one was not provided to the court. The judge therefore ruled that the enforcement agents, Bristow and Sutor, had no legal permission to demand money for council tax from the Claimant and awarded the Claimant £4,000 in damages.
The reason the judge never saw cite of a 'Liability Order' is that no court order exists, it is simply a letter from the council. The whole council tax concept and implementation is a scam. It is beyond stretching the boundary of incredulity, to say I am disgusted doesn't come anywhere near.
I fully accept that the Leighton case does not involve the council as a party to the claim but as you can see it has serious legal and moral consequences for them.
It comes as no surprise of course that should you punch into Google Leighton v Bristow and Sutor 2023 you are greeted with a whole search result list of councils desperately claiming Leighton was decided in their favour. The deception continues. Remember when it comes to money grabbing the human being knows of no level that is too low. So do not be fooled and do your own research by reading the judgement in full, it really isn't that long and it will save you tens of thousands of pounds.
(Council Tax campaigner Richard Vobes explaining the Leighton judgement)
If you want the full judgement in Leighton v Bristow and Sutor (2023) go to:
It makes compelling reading even though sadly very few people will read it. And where is the media spotlight? Nowhere to be seen, not surprisingly it must be said.
So for all you Brits out there paying Council Tax - stop doing that. I can not believe some people are still doing it. Council Tax is unlawful. Save yourself lots of money and remind yourself everyday that Council Tax does not go to paying for local services. DO YOUR RESEARCH AND BE BRAVE. Yes it's scarey but are you really prepared to live your whole life in fear of the government? Sadly far too many people are.
Peace!