Question: I own a buy -to-let property and after four years the council is asking me to pay council tax for 2007-2008.
The property is managed by the agent who is not helping me to sort this out. He says that I should have a tenancy agreement, but that does not tell me if a tenant is exempt or not.
As far as I recall, in the last ten years, most of the tenants were either students or DHS, so there was never a demand to pay the tax. At present I have mixture of two students and two DHS.
Will I have to pay tax or should the council exempt it?
Answer: Unless the tenancy agreement specifically states that the landlord is responsible for council tax, the responsibility to pay falls upon the person living in the property.
However, in periods where the property was unoccupied, council tax will be the landlord’s responsibility.
The government’s guidelines on council tax state that ‘the person at the top or nearest to the top of the following list has to pay the bill’:
- lives in the property and owns it
- lives in the property and has a lease (this includes ‘assured tenants’ under the Housing Act 1988)
- lives in the property and is a ‘statutory’ or ‘secure’ tenant
- lives in the property and isn’t a tenant but has permission to live there
- lives in the property (for example a squatter)
- has a lease of six months or more on the property, but doesn’t live there
- owns the property but doesn’t live there
In your case, when the property was occupied, it would have been the tenants’ responsibility to pay.
If full-time students, they would have been exempt from council tax. Those receiving housing benefits may have been entitled to an exemption or reduction of some kind, but it is the tenant’s responsibility to register with the local council and ensure they have the correct information.
Council tax is calculated by property rather than by number of people. Therefore, if any one tenant is liable to pay, the full amount is generally payable.
Your best course of action is to write to the council with details of who lived in the property on the dates in question, their employment status at the time and contact details.
It is then the council’s responsibility to track down the person/s who were living in the property to collect payment, if any is owed.
