Paying Ctax online

[cards down]

If a payment is made online for council tax would that payment be taken off the current years balance or an older debt if it was still outstanding?

[goggers]

Re: Paying Ctax online

There should be different ref numbers for current years tax and previous year, you normally have to put that ref number in when you pay online so it should come off whichever you choose.

[outlawlgo]

Re: Paying Ctax online

As goggers says, you'll have control over which account gets allocated funds if you have reference numbers that you can input with your payments.

However, if you find yourself in a dispute situation, a suggestion would be to request that the council allocate your funds to the account of your choosing, if the department deems this to be outside its powers, ask that they seek the judgment of "Peter v Anderson".

"A person who is indebted to another on two several accounts, may, on paying him money, ascribe it to which account he pleases.–and his election may either be expressed,-Or may be inferred from the circumstances of the transaction.

In case your interested there's some background to the system's allocation rules here in this Internal Audit Report.

3.3.1 The collection and reporting of Council Tax income is straightforward when a tax payer pays their annual charge within that year. Complexities arise when a Council Tax Payer falls into arrears and owes the council money for past years as well as the current year. There is significant case law (for example, Peter v Anderson (1814)) however, put simply, if a person specifies which years debt the payment should be assigned it should be assigned to that years debt.

3.3.2 The council tax system has built in allocation rules to ensure that the law with respect to specified payments is met. For instance, if a customer has a payment plan for any year of debt and the payment they make matches the planned instalment then the money will be allocated to that year (this is known as “hard” allocation on the council tax system). If the system is unable to “hard allocate” then it will instead “soft” allocate and the debt will be used against the oldest debt unless manually adjusted.