Derek's rough draft on LVT implementation

From the comments here:
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Kj wrote, "everyone loves a tax credit".

That was the thinking, Kj. It's the first of the five politically acceptable steps to LVT which I thought up as an attempt to get "from here to there". Each of them is supposed to be so obviously neutral or beneficial to the majority of voters that it would be difficult to argue against them.

I may have mentioned them here before but for the record they are:

1. Introduce an Income Tax credit for any Council Tax paid during the year for every UK resident. So for every pound of Council Tax you pay, you pay one pound less in Income Tax.

2. Do the same for UBR and Income Tax/Corporation Tax for any citizen running a UK business or any company registered within the UK.

3. Replace Council tax with UBR for everyone

4. Replace HMG's current Social Security and Pensions system and income tax personal allowances with a cash payment for each UK resident of 80% of the UBR take divided evenly between all eligible residents.

5. Abolish all taxes other than UBR, increasing the UBR to compensate for the loss of revenue.

Just a rough draft which could probably be improved and definitely not the only possible route (our esteemed host has also come up with some good ideas) but it's important to try and devise strategies like this if we're to have any chance of seeing LVT implemented soon.
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Seems fair enough to me, whether we call it Council Tax, Domestic Rates or UBR is neither here nor, it's all "LVT". But for clarity...

1. I would make it absolutely clear that you get a £1 income tax reduction for every £1 LVT you pay, and not the other way round, so that it is clear that your irreducible base level of tax is determined by the rental value of the land which you or your business occupies, and that the income tax is just an extra bit on top for high earners in small houses (which will be phased out anyway - see 5.)

2. and 3. Agreed. But again, what people overlook is that in the UK, income tax is only a third of all taxes collected from earned incomes/private wealth etc. For every £1 income tax you pay, on average, you are paying £2 in other taxes (mainly VAT or NIC).

4. That's a presentational thing. For half of households, the "cash payment" would be less than their LVT bill, so to save fraud and error, admin and hassle, it would be netted off at source and the LVT bill reduced accordingly. For the other half of households, the "cash payment" would be higher than their LVT bill, so the LVT would be deducted first and those households only given the balance in cash (again, to save fraud and error etc). If the "cash payment" is your only or main source of income, then you will have to minimise your LVT bill, e.g. by sharing a house in a cheap area etc.

5. That can be done in stages.