Northern Ireland

Interestingly, Northern Ireland never replaced Domestic Rates with Poll Tax or Council Tax. The old valuations had got a bit out of date, so they revalued all residential properties as at 1 January 2005 and then calculated the rate required to raise the same amount of tax, which happened to be 0.78% per annum (plus local precept, where applicable) on the updated capital values.

They cap the value per property at £400,000, so the biggest annual bill you can have is £3,120 (plus local precept if applicable). That, taken in isolation, was a daft thing to do, but I suppose it's only fair as they still have Stamp Duty Land Tax and Inheritance Tax, which are jealousy surcharges on properties worth more than £250,000 (3% band) or £500,000 (4% band) or estates worth more than £325,000 (40%).

That strikes me as a lot fairer than Council Tax in the rest of the UK, which is in 8 bands (annual bills between £850 and £2,550) so it is less regressive, i.e. does not have a Poll Tax element.

Further, if it were up to me, I'd get rid of SDLT and IHT as well and get rid of the £400,000 cap. I suspect that this would be a modest net benefit to people in homes valued at more than £400,000, i.e. would you rather pay lots of 0.78% instalments or have your heirs pay one big 44% or 43% chunk when you die? Either way, it keeps things nice and simple and enables us to shut down the departments at HMRC dealing with SDLT and IHT.