Ian Cowie, personal finance editor of the Failygraph tells us that freezing council tax, "as Chancellor George Osborne proposes to do today", will not only save the average family £72 a year but help bring home a fundamental difference between the Coalition Government and its Labour predecessor.
But, actually, this is not the case. Even if we were to concede the propaganda point of this being a "saving", the announcement assumes a 2.5 percent increase in council tax. The average CT in 2010/11 is £1,439. Thus, the "savings" in 2012/13 for 5.7 million households in Band A – the largest of the bands - will be £23.98. Only the 130,000 households in the highest banded properties – H – will "save" £71.97 pence.
And that is why we buy the Failygraph (not) – a paper which truly lives up to its motto … "never knowingly misinformed". They simply do not realise how crap they are. Or perhaps Cowie really believes that the "average family" lives in a Band H house.
Sadly, though, he and his newspaper have missed the opportunity to indulge in a bit of dark humour. With taxation, one is used to the idea of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but this - on the face of it - is robbing Peter to pay Peter.
Then, when one recalls that "Peter" is not being paid anything, but merely "saved" having to pay something extra, this is more like a case of robbing Peter in order not to rob Peter (under a different head). For a government, that is quite creative.
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