Correspondence received by the complaints unit at the Commission has raised a number of questions as to how entitlement to a council tax discount on the basis of being the only resident who does not fall to be disregarded for the purposes of the discount (which we shall call single person discount) works....
Section 10 sets out how the basic amount of council tax payable by a person
who is liable to pay council tax in respect of a chargeable dwelling is to be
calculated. Section 11(1) then states:-
“(1) The amount of council tax payable in respect of any chargeable dwelling
and any day shall be subject to a discount equal to the appropriate
percentage of that amount if on that day-
(a) there is only one resident of the dwelling and he does not fall to be
disregarded for the purposes of the discount; or
(b) there are two or more residents of the dwelling and each of them
except one falls to be disregarded for those purposes.”.
Regulation 14 provides that before making any calculation for the purposes of
Part V of the Regulations of the chargeable amount in respect of any dwelling
in its area, an authority shall take reasonable steps to ascertain whether that
amount is subject to a discount, and if so, the amount of that discount.
Regulation 15 provides that where having taken those reasonable steps ... an authority has reason to believe that the chargeable amount for the financial year concerned is subject to a discount of a particular amount, it shall assume, in making the calculation of the
chargeable amount, that the chargeable amount is subject to a discount of
that amount.
Regulation 16 goes on to provide that where a person-
(a) has been informed in accordance with any provision of demand notice
regulations [as to which see paragraph 12 below] of an assumption as
to discount made in his case; and
(b) at any time before the end of the financial year following the financial
year in respect of which the assumption is made has reason to believe
that the chargeable amount is not in fact subject to any discount, or is
subject to a discount of a smaller amount,
he shall, within the period of 21 days beginning on the day on which he first
has reason so to believe, notify the authority in writing of his belief.
A demand notice is a written notice that an authority must serve for each
financial year on every person liable to pay council tax under regulation 18, in
accordance with regulations 19-21.
Under regulation 20, the demand notice shall require the making of payments of the authority’s estimate of the chargeable amount made, as respects part or whole of the relevant year, on
various assumptions, including in regulation ... 20(3)(f) that
if, by virtue of regulation 15(2), the chargeable amount is assumed to be
subject to a discount on the day the notice is issued, that it will continue to be
subject to the same rate of discount as regards every day after the issue of
the notice.
XXXXX XXXXX identified paragraphs 42 and 47 of the NFI 2006/07 national
report under the section “Other data matching” as inaccurate. I have looked at
all of section 3 (paragraphs 42-51) and I agree that the content of paragraphs
42 and 47 could more accurately reflect the legislation.
...
23. Paragraph 47: Also within this exercise is a “Rising 18s” match which
identifies young people becoming an adult at 18 who live with a council tax
single person discount recipient. This age change could make many
recipients of the single person discount ineligible as they will not then be the
only adult living in the property ... [DN XXXXX XXXXX raised the point that no mention was made of disregards here and I agree that this is less than ideal bearing in mind that many people on turning 18 will be disregarded for the purposes of the discount due to being
students].
I have not looked in detail at the other publications on the NFI section of the
Commission website but am happy to do this and check for inaccuracies if
necessary.
