Hi,

A friend needs advice regarding council tax in the kirklees area, i was wondering if anyone could help.

Basically my friend bought a house in july last year, it needed decorating work doing to it for 3 months the propery was unfurnished whilst the decorating was done, towards the end of september tenants were put in and are currently at the property.

She recieved a court letter for council tax charge a few days ago for which she was charged from july 2011 to 14th october 2011 and a hearing has been allocated. She phoned the council tax team and was told basically they sent letters in december and january 2012 thats why its been sent to court but her tenants never gave her the letters, she was told she could not get the 6 month excemption because a previous owner had already used up the excemption.

She has been charged the full council tax without any discount for the period, my questions are, the property was taken over in september could she get money taken off as they are charging her up until october 14?

Shouldnt she get some kind of discount for an empty property?

Bump

http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/answers/council-tax/propertydiscounts.shtml

http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/answers/council-tax/counciltaxdiscounts.pdf

As for when the tenants should be paying they should submit the tenancy docs as proff of when they were moved in.

Councils can only offer 1 years exemption on a property, it does not matter if the owners are different the exemption is for the property only. So if the previous owners used the exemption your friend will be unable to claim any type of exemption from them. The only other option is to contact your local Valuation Office, they are able to remove properties from the council tax list. However the property has to be in a very bad state for them to remove it. By the sounds of it, if your friend was able to just redecorate and modernise the property then it was not in a bad enough state. Plus she would have to prove something historical and it would take pictures and reciepts if your friend has them. It sounds to me your friend will have to pay from july to september when the new tenants moved in.

A 6 month Class C exemption is awarded for an 'unoccupied and substantially unfurnished' property - once this 6 month has been used there must be a minimum of 6 weeks of occupany before this exemption could be claimed again so if the previous occupiers claimed it then your out of luck.

Once the exemption has run out and the property remains 'unoccupied and substantially unfurnished' then the rate payable varies by each local authority and is set at a discount rate of between 0% and 50%.