Do you remember when the Government tried to introduce this?

Poll tax was a tax by Maggie Thatcher , a more capatalist politician you will not find anywhere.
Poll tax was a tax on the poor. The result was riots everywhere.
If you are rich , and you have done it by yourself then usually people are clever enough to find the loopholes.

I have always found the rich benefit more than the poor when reforms are made to the tax system.
A UK perspective though.

Everyone contributes the same, everyone recieves the same services.

Seems pretty fair to me

Seems fair to me as well.

All individuals paying the same what can possibly be wrong with that?

The more people in a house the more rubbish there will be to be removed, the more they will use the education service, the more they will use the library service etc etc.

I can't be doing with these people who say 'I haven't got any kids so I object to paying for education' or 'I don't use the library' so unless we are going to use a pay as you go system which would be more akin to privatised services then it is only fair that everybody pays the same.

I think the idea of the poll tax was much fairer than the current council tax they replaced it with. Maybe the fairest system would be some kind of local income tax.

I also have to agree that the poll tax was the fairest way to do it. It simply represents the amount of use of services that we all have. I have no (direct) need of schools, social services, the NHS, etc, etc, but I am happy to pay for them.

The Council tax has fundamental flaws in it as did the equally unfair rates system that preceded the poll tax.

What the poll tax actually did was to enable certain activists to politically mobilise a completely new group of people who suddenly could be manipulated because they had never paid this type of tax before. Hence the poll tax riots causing problems for the conservative government of the day.

If you really think hard about it, what was wrong about the poll tax?

I think a lot of the objection to the poll tax stemmed from the way it was set up, and the lack of help for poorer people and students.

Agreed. The principle is as sound as you will find, but implementation is the trick.

Originally posted by Lickszz
Do you remember when the Government tried to introduce this?

Poll tax was a tax by Maggie Thatcher , a more capatalist politician you will not find anywhere.
Poll tax was a tax on the poor. The result was riots everywhere.
If you are rich , and you have done it by yourself then usually people are clever enough to find the loopholes.

I have always found the rich benefit more than the poor when reforms are made to the tax system.
A UK perspective though.




Good to see that at least one moderator is fair and open minded.

Where do they find them?????

Originally posted by Patchy
I think a lot of the objection to the poll tax stemmed from the way it was set up, and the lack of help for poorer people and students.

When the Poll Tax was in place I was a full time college student and was exempt from paying it, by the time I'd started working full time it was abolished :D

Having said that now that I pay council tax, im sure it would be cheaper and fairer to pay poll tax, especially if your a single occupant of a property.