Petition Replace Council Tax With Local Income Tax

We call on Parliament to legislate at the earliest possibility to abolish the council tax system in England and replace it with a system of local income tax.

Council tax is a regressive tax, not based on the ability of an individual to pay, and is based on a subjective regime of property valuations. If each local authority was able to add up to a certain number of pence in the pound on the rate of income tax charged for individuals resident in their area they would be able to collect at least the same amount of revenue but base it on the individual's ability to pay via the PAYE system. This would also have financial savings as it would eliminate the expensive council tax and council tax benefit regime and use the existing PAYE system.

This system gels entirely with the idea of the Universal Credit and the Localism agenda.