Being taken to court over Council Tax

Chads

Chads

Chads

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Could do with some advice;

I'm a student living with 7 other students in a rented house. Ever since we moved in nearly 6 months ago, we've been getting the odd letters about council tax. Being students, part of the deal with this rented house was that we were exempt from paying Council tax. I think it's the same for most students living in their first rented accommodation.

At the beginning of this year we sent an e-mail to our landlords (Unicom) who promtly replied saying they would sort it out, and not to worry. A couple more letters came, and another e-mail was sent to Unicom asking what was going on. I need to ask my housemate (who was in charge of sorting the issue out with Unicom) what happened, correspondance wise, next.

A week ago everyone in the house recieved a court summons, saying that because we haven't paid our council tax, we have to go to court in a couple of months, lovely. We've got a Unicom agent coming round later today to talk to us about extending our contract to next year, so we can talk to her about this whole mess tonight.

My mate has saved the reply e-mail from Unicom that states they will sort it out for us.

Thoughts? Can this mess be sorted out before anyone has to go to court?
 
Chads said:
Thoughts? Can this mess be sorted out before anyone has to go to court?
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Yes, contact your local council and discuss it with them. They will ask you to provide some piece of evidence to prove your claim and then likely retract the summons...
 
Sounds like your landlord is useless. If it comes to going to court, I can't see much happening. Just make sure you take proof that you're students and they'll just chuck it out immediately, I would have thought.

cleanbluesky said:
Yes, contact your local council and discuss it with them. They will ask you to provide some piece of evidence to prove your claim and then likely retract the summons...
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Yip, that's how it is usually. You get your uni to give you a particular letter which you give to the council.
 
From what I remember, everyone in the house needs to individually get a letter from the university stating that they are registered as students there, and then you can send them off together to the council for exemption. Someone probably should have told you that when you first moved in, but I doubt anyone was obligated to.
 
Say you dont use the nhs, fire sevice, police, garbage collection and you couldnt care less how much litter was on your street so you saw no need to pay.
 
iBot said:
Say you dont use the nhs, fire sevice, police, garbage collection and you couldnt care less how much litter was on your street so you saw no need to pay.
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Students. Don't. Have. To. Pay.
 
Belmit said:
From what I remember, everyone in the house needs to individually get a letter from the university stating that they are registered as students there, and then you can send them off together to the council for exemption. Someone probably should have told you that when you first moved in, but I doubt anyone was obligated to.
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That's the way it usually works.

I got a court summons 2 of the 4 years I lived off campus at uni through being too lazy to send the letters. The council are used to students being like this, so just take the aforementioned letters to the local office and they'll sort it out.
 
When I was at uni I was given a certificate saying I was a student. So best bet is get everyone in your house to go to the student union to see what your uni does. Then go down the council office with all your paperwork and it will all be sorted out.
 
You could have quite easily dealt with this yourselves by contacting the council offices. Rather waste their time by going through the process of issuing a summons. All that wasted officers time puts up my tax bills thanks! :rolleyes:
 
Mr Mag00 said:
All that wasted officers time puts up my tax bills thanks! :rolleyes:
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Haha I love comments like these. Where people get annoyed at students not paying tax. Well, you do realise that after the 3/4/5 years we spend studying we will be contributing and in a lot of cases paying a lot more tax? We are hardly ripping off the state like those on the dole fiddling the system. :rolleyes: (for effect)

What about the students like me who worked before going to Uni and paid a shedload of tax?

edit - just for the record, I do also agree with you RE wasting officers time as I thought it was common knowledge that all students should sort this themselves.
 
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You'll be fine, i wouldn't worry about it as you all are students. The worst comes to worst is you go to court, just bring ID and letters from uni with you and this will be thrown out.
 
iBot said:
Say you dont use the nhs, fire sevice, police, garbage collection and you couldnt care less how much litter was on your street so you saw no need to pay.
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Haha, that made me smile, thank you.

And last time I checked the NHS, fire service and police don't get any of the council tax money... Although I'm nowhere near even being 100% certain on that so feel free to correct me :)
 
for the record too. I also worked before going to uni, worked whilst at uni and now run 2 businesses. It was as you rightly noted not about non payment of tax but about the time wasting of council officers. i thought students were supposed to be bright and therefore could have dealt with the issue rather passing the buck to unicom. grrrr
await flaming
 
they'll convict you in your absence and add some costs (about £50 i think) so you won't have to actually turn up in court ;)

oh, and apparently once the summons has been issued it can only be overturned by paying the outstanding amount in full, NOT by making an arrangement to pay. but in your case, if you can all get the stuff to prove you are all students then it has been issued in error.

it also doesn't go against your permanent credit record if you get convicted as it's a default as opposed to a ccj (that's what i was told anyway). but as everyone has said, get yourself down to the offices and give them some stick.

nin9a *speaking from bitter experience* badga
 
Mr Mag00 said:
for the record too. I also worked before going to uni, worked whilst at uni and now run 2 businesses. It was as you rightly noted not about non payment of tax but about the time wasting of council officers. i thought students were supposed to be bright and therefore could have dealt with the issue rather passing the buck to unicom. grrrr
await flaming
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My apologies then. Thank goodness for my quick edit ;):D
 
Mikol said:
edit - just for the record, I do also agree with you RE wasting officers time as I thought it was common knowledge that all students should sort this themselves.
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Common knowledge? Not really; half the students on my course at Uni didn't even know how council tax worked, let alone that they were exempt. The only reason we didn't phone the Council Tax office to explain was because Unicom said they were sorting it all out, we took their word for it.

i thought students were supposed to be bright and therefore could have dealt with the issue rather passing the buck to unicom. grrrr
await flaming
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We didn't "pass the buck", we asked them what was going on, and they said they would deal with it. Simple, issue sorted.
 
Chads said:
Common knowledge? Not really; half the students on my course at Uni didn't even know how council tax worked, let alone that they were exempt. The only reason we didn't phone the Council Tax office to explain was because Unicom said they were sorting it all out, we took their word for it.
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I guess my friends and fellow coursemates, just like me, looked into it before hand as we were unsure of the consequences. Glad we did now if court is the net result :eek:
 
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