Appeals

Yes, we have to accept that there will be a flurry of appeals against the initial assessments/Banding.

a) If we use the concept of relative values/banding as explained above, the valuation authority can be relatively relaxed about allowing appeals during the initial assessment stage; if half of people appeal and half of those get their home/plot shifted down a band, then the equivalised number of units of housing goes down, but the tax rate can be nudged up to keep total revenues constant.

b) Banding reduces the number of appeals, even if the result is a bit arbitrary in some cases. If each individual home is given a precise £ value, then it is always worth putting in an appeal. With Banding, the appellant will have to show that the rules have not been applied consistently (i.e. there was a mathematical mistake) and/or that the home/plot in question is in fact much smaller than assumed, or suffers from some particular factor, i.e. is next to an electricity sub-station etc, which means that it should be in a lower Band (i.e. that the correctly calculated value is about twenty per cent lower than the originally assessed value).

c) Only those who own a home at the time of the original valuation/Banding will be allowed to appeal within the next 12 months. Future purchasers will be deemed to have accepted that the Banding is correct at the time they buy a home; even if the tax is objectively 'too high', that will be reflected in a lower purchase price so they have already got their money back. The tax on other homes might turn out to have been assessed 'too low', which is a one-off windfall gain for the current owner.