A petition calling for council tax and stamp duty to be scrapped and replaced with a single property tax has passed 100,000 signatures, meaning it will be debated in Parliament. The petition, organised by the campaign group Fairer Share, backs a Proportional Property Tax: a flat annual charge of 0.48% of a home’s current value, replacing both taxes outright. It argues that council tax bands, still based on 1991 property values, no longer reflect what homes are worth or what people can afford, and that arrears have climbed to £8.3bn. Advocates claim 77% of households would be better off under the change, with a £300,000 home paying roughly £1,440 a year.
The decision now sits with Andy Burnham, who used his first major broadcast interview as Prime Minister to suggest wealthier homeowners in the South could face higher property taxes as a way to “create some fairness” for the north of England. Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Burnham said people in Greater Manchester pay far more council tax than owners of much larger homes in London, and called that unfair. Options he mentioned include the proportional property tax, a land value tax charged on the value of the land a property sits on rather than the building, or simply lowering the threshold for the mansion tax surcharge announced at last year’s Budget from £2m to £1.5m. He ruled none of them out, the Telegraph reported.
The i Paper reported separately that the Government is actively weighing up the proportional property tax and the land value tax as the two leading contenders to replace council tax and stamp duty. More than 100 Labour MPs are said to be pushing for reform, including members of a newly formed Labour MPs for Council Tax Reform caucus and the Red Wall group, and Treasury officials were reportedly looking at the options even before Burnham took office.
