bigglesworth

Thanks - I am checking with 'er Indoors, who actually does the banking. But that is what she always tells me.

Unless she is spending it on handbags??????

rebs

Stick your postcode in here and it will tell you what band it is in.. you can then easily check the cost for that band in your council area...

bigglesworth

Thank you I have found it. and have found the council tax bill from the council. The two are nothing like the same. The wife has exaggerated, but not by much. The amount of the bill is nearly 50 percent more than the websearch!
I think we will be having a conversation. I am looking at bold ones, and it is nearly ten years since we paid the amount the web says is now due!

rebs

Your council tax bill is usually spread over 10 monthly payments, whereas what you might be seeing online is likely to be the annual charge - does that account for some of the discrepancy?

http://council-tax-rates.com/index.php/rates-by-council

That list is pretty much bang on for my council tax in East Dorset... is that the one you are looking at for your council which differs from the amount on your bill?

Englishmum

Yep. Our housing tax (ie. council tax) on our very modest 3 bedroomed house in New Jersey is a whopping US 14,500 per annum/US$1208 per month or at the exchange rate today on xe.com is 722 Pounds per month.... In the US it is the usual custom to pay the housing tax with the mortgage. Most of the homes in our neighbourhood pay a lot more - I've seen property listings with annual council tax bills of $60,000 + (I think the Wall St bankers and heart surgeons live in those houses).

OK for 'sticker shock' look at the housing taxes in our township:

The cheapest property for sale currently on the multiple listing service (which all the realtors use). This house seems to need major renovation or will be torn down and a new property built on the site:

http://www2.gsmls.com/publicsite/pro...&sysid=3115380 Asking price $459,000. Housing tax per annum $8712. If the house is renovated then the tax will increase.


http://www2.gsmls.com/publicsite/pro...&sysid=3116813 Asking price $7,599,000. Housing tax per annum: $152,786)

However.....we do get the rubbish collected every Monday and Thursday (although they tend to dump the empty bins sticking out into the street - there are no sidewalks/pavements) and the township (Millburn/Short Hills) has one of the best public (ie. state) schools in NJ....my son left High School a few years ago. We do have a full-time fire service unlike many American towns which have volunteers.

dunroving

- honestly, you just can't get good help these days, can you?

It was your previous posts and others from NJ that made me think of this.

I pay about the same per year as you pay per month. It almost makes it worthwhile that they are switching to a once-a-month bin collection.

Englishmum

TBH I just want to get rid that that damn house. However my spouse is now working in Switzerland and gave up his green card - so when we tried to re-finance to get a lower mortgage rate the bank wouldn't allow it and as a 'trailing spouse' I'm not able to re-finance either. Our son is living there and would be homeless if we sell it - he is in his early 20's and saving as hard as he can for a deposit on his own place eventually. We may be leaving Switzerland in about 16 months and who knows where we will end up, so will have a big re-think on what we will do with the house.

On the bright side, the next township over from ours (Maplewood & South Orange) has even higher housing taxes than our town - they have no industry or shopping complexes to help bring the rateables down, whereas there is a large shopping mall in our town.

Bud the Wiser

I can never understand why those who award themselves excessive salaries from the public purse are not held accountable in some way. Gravy train comes to mind.

Council/property taxes, whatever you pay, should be about value of return for what you pay.

This expenditure I just find incredulous..........

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...nt-garden.html

Harvester523

Ours is about £110 a month for a big house with land (including tv license), we have a street light right by the side of the house - great for late night trips to the loo (that's inside, not out - the street light makes a lovely nightlight and it's white too not that sodium yellow rubbish), the rubbish and recycling is collected once a week, the verges are trimmed twice a year, there are no potholes in the road (only in our drive), the snowplough comes out on day 2 of snow at the latest and comes down our drive too, we can see a doctor next day and he'll spend up to an hour with you, the village nurse sees my mother every day for no charge and all my mothers health care is free as she has diabetes, we got a consultant appointment at the hospital for hubby the next day, the sapeur pompiers (bless 'em, volunteer fire/paramedics) can get here in ten minutes, get to someone to hospital in 15 minutes, and come out to check up if we're snowed in, most parking is free, and what is charged is laughably small, no cctv cameras, I can take the dog for a walk and not meet a single person and hardly cross any roads, traffic is light, no air traffic overhead, no motorways or rail within earshot - I can hear the birds and see the stars, and in the 10 years I've been here I know of one crime in the vicinity, a burglary. Oh, and ADSL in the middle of nowhere, and they're just rolling out the fibre optics.
That's what makes Britain crap.

chris955

Sounds very much like where we live

englishguygoinghome

- "If I can't have it why should he" attitude eg EU immigration - the solution to the fact that someone else CAN bring their wife and kids to the UK and work here but you can't is NOT to stop them from doing it too!
Dog-Poo
- A 60% effective top tax rate, not even placed at the top of the earnings scale but part way through it
- BBC News channel
- The fact you can't get BBC World News unless you put up a dish and point it to a "foreign" satellite
- Bankrupt pension system with no ability to cope with the decreasing working-age to non-working age population
- Pedestrians who walk on cycle tracks and then get angry if you ring a bell or pass them at speed
- An inability to welcome immigration as a way to bring in more taxpayers/NI contributors and thus aleviate the pension problem
- A lack of choice regarding the NHS, Schooling. The "if he can't have it attitude" strikes again in that it is impossible to upgrade what you get without simply throwing it away and paying a second time.
- The idea that any law passed through parliament cannot be "illegal", the lack of a consitution and to some extent the use of common law instead of civil law
- Jus solis instead of jus sanguinis
- A hatred of things that once made us great: the European Convention of Human Rights, railways
- A lack of consideration for others (or an expectation of consideration which seems backwards). This goes well beyond just the Chavs and is indeginous in the general population (noisy neighbours: "why shouldn't I be able to play music loud at 9:30pm on my Birthday?"/"It's OK, he's having a party so put up with the noise", pedestrians on cycle paths: "slow down there may be pedestrians about", those who leave dog-poo: "teach your kids to avoid it")

orly

False. Many countries have a similar arrangement.

beachgal21

People that moan about Britain when in reality they don't know just how well off they are!

Shard

Nicely said, and true in the country, but not quite the same in the cities.

alfista1

Well said!

Been living in a developing country for ten years now.
My wife taught me how to save and become less materialistic.
Many things I took for granted do not exist here.
I remember complaining but now think of all the great things I truly miss aabout the uk.