Letters to the editor

Poll Tax would have helped communities

Sir, - I refer to your columnist Alex Bell’s commentary on the housing market in Scotland, Scotland’s a great place to be rich in (August 10).

Surely the Holyrood government should be taking in hand the problem of the increasing number of holiday and second homes owned, but not occupied, or only part-time occupied by the owners.

Here in Fife, the council imposes a penalty of 200% of chargeable council tax on unoccupied residential property but it seems this does not apply to holiday homes.

In the East Neuk there are dozens of such homes and the same is increasingly true of other parts of the UK blessed with scenic attributes.

Way back in the 1980s, the much-reviled Maggie Thatcher tried to completely change the tax on residential housing (the Poll Tax) that arguably could have been a much fairer method of financing communities had the opportunity been given for reforms to the policy that would have continued the 80% discounts to students and the unemployed, while levying a premium penalty on the owners of houses that were not occupied by traceable tax-registered inhabitants.

Unfortunately, such was the poorly-informed emotional furore in Scotland, that the whole idea was hastily dropped.

We have in its place the council tax that does nothing to improve council finances because, as Mr Bell says, it is comprised of so many loopholes it is discriminatory.

Here is a cause that should be taken up by the SNP instead of the time wasted on constitutional grandstanding.

Pittenweem, one of the East Neuk villages popular with holiday home owners.