The Isle of Wight Council’s regular review of single occupier council tax discount is underway to check the correct amounts are being paid by households.
Letters are being sent out from this week with an accompanying form so the council can update its records. The form must be completed and returned.
Those who qualify are entitled to a 25% reduction on their council tax bills.
As part of the review, the council has appointed an external agency using data matching technology to identify where people may be claiming discounts they are not entitled to.
A council spokesperson said:
“If you claim the discount and no longer qualify as a person living alone you must let us know so we can update our records.
“We’d also like to remind residents who qualify but have not claimed, that they are entitled to do so. The exercise is not just about collecting the right level of tax but being equitable and fair.
“The checks form part of the council’s measures to prevent and detect fraud and protect the public purse and to ensure claims are by council taxpayers who are genuinely entitled.
Article continues below this advertisement “We would strongly urge all claimants who no longer qualify to let us know as soon as possible.”
More information about single person discount can be found at www.iwight.com/ctspdreview.
There is also an online version of the form at https://www.iow.gov.uk/Residents/Benefits-Council-Tax-and-Business-Rates/Council-Tax-Services/Council-Tax-Reductions/Discounts.
Perhaps ONE months free council tax for anyone who ‘shops’ the many so called ‘single’ parents and occupants of properties would be a cash saving way for the council to save money.
The council need to publish a full list of EVERY house which is claiming ‘single occupancy’ and then people who live near, or know that these people are ‘not’ single, can shop them.
The council don’t even need to publish the names of the alleged single occupant, just the address, if data protection is an issue.
I am sure that then, once evidence is collected it would save millions per year, as many are doing this and claiming more child allowance and child tax credits ‘pretending’ to be single parents.
But the public ‘need’ a reward to shop people, and a free months council tax or so would be good.
Friend against friend,neighbour against neighbour,what’s the name for that ,normally associated with 30 pieces of silver
So your plan is to create a shopping list for burglars and rapists of the homes of single women and the elderly.
If you gave a reward to shop people then on this island the IWC would be bankrupt in a week.
The IWC could of course recoup that with fines but their pathetic structure is all about posturing, not saving money.
Well said,,ptd
People like you make the future seem terrifying, while we are at it let’s put everyone’s personal information all over the internet and up on billboards so that we can self-police ourselves, round up everyone who hasn’t been able to pay one lot of their bills this month because no one has any money, scout out who hasn’t paid their TV license, everyone with a fence half an inch above the planned development limit let’s get them to, and condemn them, alienate them and make them vulnerable. Good idea!
I bet your a real joy to live next door too!
An outside agency paid to do what the lazy staff could easily do if they were organised and bothered!!
But no – why use paid staff to actually do something when you have the taxpayers coffers at hand to throw money out of?
This lazy policing has been done before by this feckless council.
I’d like to see the money saved versus money for the operation itself.
Phone to try to get anything done at the moment and you get the current catch-all pathetic excuse of “coronavirus, coronaviris, covid, no staff, overwhelmed, not priority, yadda, yadda, yadda”
Yet enough resources and pseudo staff to organise this little farce yet again.
Typical of the bloody council, as soon as people go back to work, in come the heavy handed tactics. Any farmers got a muck spreader ?