Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello! I might have to go to court tomorrow, so I'm having a bit of a panic/whine. Feel free to ignore this, as it is probably quite tedious.

Me and my housemates moved into this house last September. Two of us are students, and one works full-time. Being the excellent sort, I had my student declaration certificate ready to be sent off to the council for the appropriate council tax discount. My other student housemate, also generally being the excellent sort but dropping the ball on this occasion, didn't get her student declaration certificate sorted until about five weeks ago. By that point, we'd had a load of bills, and a court summons for the 3rd of April. So I quickly posted the certificates to the council, along with a covering letter basically saying "hello here is proof that two of us are students so you can make the appropriate discount, sorry it's really late but we had trouble getting the documents together, and also we assume the court date is no longer necessary as we are fully willing to pay the required amount as soon as we know for certain what that amount is, plus you have our certificates now so it would be a waste of everyone's time anyway" - only it was dead formal, obviously.

Now, what usually happens (in my experience) when you send student certificates off is that they send them back within a couple of weeks, then a few weeks later you get a new bill. Only this time, we just got another bill, trying to get us to pay council tax on the property until March 2009, about a week after I sent my letter/certificates. By this point, though, I was due to go and stay with my parents for a couple of weeks over Easter, so it was left with my housemates. I get back today to find there's been no further communication to or from the council, and the court date is tomorrow.

So, the obvious answer is 'get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and phone the council to find out what the hell is going on'. But there's just under twelve hours between now and then, and the prospect of having to go to court tomorrow, on my own (both my housemates are busy), without any of the documentation I need (since the council still have it), to make a load of shit excuses, is making for a pretty miserable evening.

Any advice, chaps?

Erm, I don't know about the court stuff, but I can tell you that if you can pay it just pay it. At least in Camden. As the discount will work retroactively for the period you're a student. Due to series of events we didn't get proof of student status for a few months into living here, but the bills now are extra-discounted (if that makes sense) to include the discount we missed earlier.

Sorry you probably could have done with knowing that a while ago....

"both my housemates are busy". Erm, why aren't they going? They're as lible as you on. Surely they're summoned as well?!

A judge saying "you're all lible" would be the funniest thing ever.

They're both working, as the student-housemate is on a work placement. And yeah, I'm not best pleased about it either.

The other housemate may be willing to skive the morning off to come along, though. He hasn't come home yet, so I'll have to ask him when he does.

I don't think you have to go and it just a formal thing! Never actually been but I've been summoned. Just got told to pay more fees.

I think you've done the correct thing just proving you sent of the documents could be an arse.

A Judge with a French accent? Hilllllllllarious!

If it is actually a summons and you don't attend a default judgement will be made against you. Basically, by not submitting a defence or a reason why you shouldn't have to pay, the magistrate will decide that you are liable. It would therefore be best to go and just tell him why you haven't paid taking the documents with you. Be prepared though, he/she will have no sympathy for you at all.

We had a similar problem back in my 2nd year of uni. Three of us were students, exempt, and one of us dropped out for a year and was liable for the tax. Again, we were fairly late getting our forms in (or rather, the one housemate who was liable for us all didn't bother to tell us and didn't give us time to sort it out by paying some of the bill which he'd have to pay either way) and we got a court summons.

Basically, I had the ring the council, explain the situation with the late forms, and the court thing was nullified in return for a £50 fine. It still pisses me off that we all agreed to go 1/4 each on the fine, when it actually wasn't our fault.

The liable housemate spent the rest of the year being miserable, as he had this strange idea that despite the fact it was only because he was living there, not being a student, made us liable for council tax in the first place, that we should have all contributed equally to the total bill. He got mugged twice that year, so there is some justice in the world

You shouldn't have to pay council tax if you have to live with students.

Presumably on the basis that no-one will ever get round to putting any rubbish out to be collected anyway.

Agreed. Not paying Council Tax is one of the quickest ways to find your self in court.

Best to just pay it now, if you can, and pick through the bones afterwards.

Also, you should only get a demand for a full years payment after the 3rd reminder has been sent out.

Is this the case?

EDIT:

Ah, crap. I missed the 'court date tomorrow' thing and the 'got no documentation copies' bit as well. Um. Well, if you still had time then the following advice would be useful. Otherwise I guess you'll just have to cite your previous efforts, if your able to refer the person you were dealing with in your correspondence that might help. Bit shit your housemates were so laissez faire when you put all that effort in though. MR UNHAPPY FACE.


Previous now irrellevant blah:

Ooh. I used to work in Housing Benefit & Council Tax.

The best thing to do here is to go down to your local Housing Benefit & Council Tax Advice & Benefits office. Best yet if you can get their number of the council website and pre-book an appointment. Gather together all the evidence you can think of, including past correspondence, and go there and be super nice and winning with the previous arguement you used. Things can be sorted out and there is a certain amount of 'give'. (Though I was involved mainly in scanning in documents, indexing, admin support and basic enquiries so don't know the details really.)

Basically get it sorted out face to face, your chances are a lot better. I managed to get all my money back after I was mistakenly retro-double-assessed over my income tax-wise, after everyone and WoS told me that it was impossible to do so. And I managed this through a cheery face-to-face with lots of paper work. I've worked with council tax assessors before and frequently the extra bill after everything has been sorted has been the result of ships passing in the night, ie: you telling them everything's sorted at the same moment another office room is stamping and enveloping your new bill letter.

So don't panic, and go see them. Hope it works out for you.

No photocopies?

Yeah, I think the assumption is that because they have much busier lifestyles, whereas I spend most of my time nerding it up and making sounds, I'm the one who should deal with stuff like this. I have to sort out all the bills and stuff too. Which wouldn't be so bad, except I'm pretty shit at it.

They cook meals and stuff in return though, so it could be worse.

And yeah, no photocopies. Helpfully my student certificate actually says DO NOT ACCEPT A PHOTOCOPY OF THIS on it. I didn't really see how anyone would be able to tell if it was a photocopy or not, but it was enough to put me off bothering to photocopy it.

Paying the whole council tax bill of a typical student house on your own would be a total pain in the hole, and if I were in the situation and forced to foot the whole bill, I'd probably move out. Any saving he made on rent by sharing a house would be nullified by the tax bill. It'd be easier and about as cheap to live in a flat on his own.

Having said that, I'd probably be annoyed as well, but not really consider it his fault so much as the government's for having such an arsed up council tax system.

I've had numerous court summons for various council tax tomfoolery. Normally a quick phonecall when you get it does the trick, but I see you're cutting it fine. Still, definitely get on the blower to them ASAP!

Good luck!

Bonus story: I'm never moving back to Manchester as I took a 'year out' to re-sit my second year of Uni (I'm a slacker), but took the sensible precaution of getting a Council Tax Exemption form the day before I ceased to be a student. We duly sent this form, along with those of the other 6 housemates, to the council.

They then proceeded to lose them, and request additionally copies, which I could of course not produce. I managed to stave off the constant demands and haranguing for the rest of the year, to the point where the baillifs were due to come round to the house the day after we all moved out.

*hides from Manchester council's wrath*

Can't you just turn up at court and tell the Madge that the Council are being inefficient cunts? He/she will dismiss the case immediately.

Probably not when you think about it - he'd have had to pay CT wherever he moved, and got the added bonus of all regular bills being shared between 4 people. It was extremely cheap rent at about £50 a week, and in Manchester you'd do well to get a 1 person flat for £450/month. He was better off, just bitter He also didn't pay anything for the internet we had put in, but solved the problem by merely using a housemate's PC whenever he liked. :/

Seems to be a pretty common theme. When I moved out of my house in Cardiff and was trying to sell it, Cardiff council merrily carried on charging me full rates, despite me having 1) phoned them about this; 2) written to them, just to be on the safe side, and; 3) having actually gone there in person, to confirm that the council had everything it needed to make the change, just to, er, be on the safe side of the safe side. After about six months, the house sold and Cardiff council happily carried on charging me anyway. A nice letter and then a couple of threatening letters and some rather curt phone calls, and I eventually got my money back, but ARGH!

Oddly enough, Hart District Council, despite being utterly inefficient at everything bar arguing (when the Tories are in, the Lib-Dem/indies spend their entire time saying the Tories are rubbish, and vice-versa), have so far been pretty good when it comes to council tax.

Here's a good one. Manchester City council now make it IMPOSSIBLE for you to speak to a person about Council Tax on the phone. Oh yes. They now have a giant, stupid, retarded automated 'information' system, and after spending at least half an hour trying to find a permutation of options that would result in 'speak to an adviser', I gave up and instead rang a completely random council number and asked how the hell I'm supposed to ring someone about my council tax. The guy on the other end of the phone refused to sympathise, but did give me a different number than the automated system.

So I rang this number, which I'd been assured went through to a person and what I got was a recorded message saying 'This number is now out of service, please call the automated helpline on 0845 blahblahblah'.

The problem I was having, incidentally, is that the council for some fucking bizarre reason were sending the council tax bills for my new house WHERE I LIVED to the old place I was renting IN A DIFFERENT COUNCIL BOROUGH and NO LONGER LIVED AT. So the council were busy sending 'YOU HAVENT PAID YOU BILL, WE'RE GOING TO MURDER YOU' notices to the wrong address and I was blissfully unaware until I happened, by chance, to pop by to the old place and pick up my post.

So, after trying in vain to speak to a person about this address problem, the only option I was given was to send a letter to a postal address, or send an email. I sent an email, and got a reply no sooner than 5 weeks later telling me they'd updated my address. 21st Century government, eh?

ComicalGnomes; As with every "robot voice" if you want to speak to an advisor all you have to do is "do nothing". They're all required to do that. It's incase you don't have a touch tone phone or whatever.

Also: http://www.saynoto0870.com is your friend.

I got a letter sent by Brent Council to Exeter asking why I hadn't paid my council tax between July 2002 and April 2003. They sent this to me in 2006. I moved out of the house they were talking about in May 2000. They had records of the person who bought my flat paying council tax from May 2000 to June 2002, but suddenly thought I was liable since then! And took 3 years to work this out! (Maybe that's how long it took them to find me, even tho my final bill came to the Exeter address!

Then I had to prove that I hadn't lived there since May 2000, So I had to dig out all sorts of paper work to do that. I wonder if Exeter Council will do the same in a few years time now I've moved to Ivybridge?

Malc

My mum recently got a bill addressed to her and a fictitious partner, asking for council tax on a property we've never even been to. Why they sent it to this house and not the property they were asking for council tax on is beyond me...