Nine in ten of Scotland’s Households are being screwed to protect the richest ten per cent

The latest proposals for Council Tax reform have been published and as usual they are being debated in terms of how they will impact the very wealthiest households and not how they will affect the majority of people. This is not even nearly an accurate account of what is happening.

Common Weal will do a much more complete analysis of the proposals later in the week but for now let us give you the headline number you should look for; £400,000. The Scottish Government has produced a number of different proposals for reforming the existing Council Tax which mainly revolve around revaluing existing property or adding some bands at the top.

This may give the impression of reform or that fairness is being pursued, but you would be wrong to think that. What is really happening is that proposals are being produced to protect the wealthiest ten per cent of the population from paying their fair share. These proposals are specifically designed to avoid discussing a Proportional Property Tax (the form proposed by Common Weal) which would tax people fairly.

It doesn't matter for the purposes of this analysis what extra bands are to be added to the top end of the current Council Tax for a simple reason; post-reform (based on any of these proposals), the Council Tax would remain more or less as unfair as it is now.

To understand why, let's return to that number of £400,000. According to the data in the discussion paper produced by the Scottish Government, that is the cut-off point for the top ten per cent most expensive houses in Scotland. To put that another way, 90 per cent of Scotland’s households live in a house which is worth less than £400,000.

Here is the point; in every single version of the Scottish Government's proposals, almost everyone under that threshold will be paying more than their fair share. The break-even point varies according to which of their reform models is used but in every instance it is above £400,000.

And the higher above £400,000 your house is worth, the more and more you get a discount under these proposals. The most generous version (to the rich) of these proposals will offer a discount of about £5,000 to a household where the house is worth £1.4 million, the least generous 'only' a discount of about £2,300 to that household.

That is compared to simply asking people to pay a set proportion of the value of their house. (As a reminder, Common Weal calculates that a Property Tax set at 0.63 per cent of the house value each year would be revenue-neutral with the Council Tax as is).

Of course that discount just keeps rising. By the time your house is worth £2 million these proposals will give you an annual discount of £9,000 (under the most generous system).

Yet do not expect to see this being explained in the media. The interests of the wealthy dominate news coverage and news values are heavily biased towards the concerns of the rich. Many of those you will hear speaking about this on broadcast in the coming days and weeks will be winning out from these proposals. They should be asked to disclose the value of their house.

The Scottish Government's track record on Council Tax reform is farcical. Give or take, there is no point since 2007 where it has not been official policy to replace the Council Tax yet it never happens. Even though it would be in the interests of most of the people in Scotland who do not live in a house worth more than £400,000, still this doesn't happen.

There has been a rising call from more and more observers to follow Common Weal's model (or a version of it). It is the best and most effective wealth tax that can be introduced in Scotland. This appears to be the Scottish Government stepping forward as a human shield to protect the richest from these pressures for replacement. It says much about the priorities of this government.