Scrap Council Tax

In an attempt to head off the escalating number of protests against the relentless rises in council tax, the government's benefits minister, James Plaskitt, has unveiled a simplified council tax benefit claim form (3 pages instead of 26) and said that 1.8 million pensioners will receive a phone call to discuss their eligibility for council tax benefit.

If the average phone call takes "only" 5 minutes it may come as a surprise that this little exercise is going to take over 100 MAN YEARS of effort. Looked at another way, if it was to be completed in 6 months it would require over 200 people working full time just to make all these 5 minute phone calls.

It is cause for concern that so much effort is expended, without question, on patching up a system that is not working. The whole of the council tax benefits system would be redundant if council tax was related to income. Instead the government persists with the notion that a fair way to levy tax to pay for local services is based on the value of your property, which bears no relationship whatsoever to the income from which you have to pay the tax.

It should be pretty obvious that there is a fundamental flaw in any system of taxation if an ever increasing number of people are forced into claimimg benefits because their income is insufficient to pay the tax.

Is it any wonder that so many people are angry about the present system of council tax?

The ScrapCouncilTax estimate of over 100 man years is calculated as follows:

• 1.8 million phone calls each lasting 1 minute would take 1.8 million minutes. Therefore if the average call duration was 5 minutes the total time is 9 million minutes (5 times 1.8 million).
• 9 million minutes equals 150,000 man hours of work (9 million divided by 60).
• A normal working week is 37 hours, but allowing for normal overheads such as meetings, general admin, work breaks, assume 30 hours of phone calls could be made.
• Therefore 150,000 man hours equals 5,000 man weeks of work (150,000 divided by 30).
• Allowing for annual leave, bank holidays and sickness the number of weeks at work in a year averages about 46.
• Therefore 5,000 man weeks equals 108 man years (5,000 divided by 46).