Charging Things Up

Council Tax should be abolished.

Those who happen to be householders, although by no means necessarily owner-occupiers, are arbitrarily required to be the only people who pay local taxes as such, based on a highly speculative valuation of an asset that may not be theirs to sell, and which, even if it were, they could not sell unless they were then expected to go and live up a tree or something.

The cost of statutory services is already met out of central government grants, or it would be if those grants were forthcoming in practice. Following the introduction of the Universal Basic Income and of Modern Monetary Theory's Job Guarantee, so that nobody would be disenfranchised on grounds of poverty, let there be a voluntary flat fee, payable to the council, for registration as a local government elector.

The National Trust and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution not only survive, but thrive, providing services universally on this basis. So would the BBC, with its Trust elected by and from among the license-payers, and with the license fee itself made voluntary.

And so would local government.