Revaluations

According to Communities Secretary Eric Pickles' estimate, doing a revaluation for Council Tax would cost £280 million, i.e. about £10 per home. It might cost a few hundred pounds if there is an appeal (which is less than people pay to have an accountant prepare their Self-Assessment tax return prepared year in, year out).

Putting homes into Bands will be much cheaper, it can be done as a paper exercise from Council Tax and HM Land Registry records, with a quick 'drive by' as a check, like the original Council Tax valuations. From moneysavingexpert:

Once upon a time, way back in 1991, in time for the launch of its new council tax system, the Government needed every property in the land to be put in a valuation band. But time was short, and the job large, so the people in charge asked estate agents and others to help.

Yet even with all the estate agents' help, they didn't have time to get the detailed information together, so they set about doing it quick by pairing up and driving down countless streets, allocating each property a band with just a glance. They became known as “second gear valuations” as they never even stopped their cars, never mind got out of them.

Further, the initial valuations/Banding is a one-off cost.

- The main thing is that future increases in rental value are captured. Valuers can reassess rental values (or implied rental values) each year and adjust Band D tax in each area accordingly; the tax in all other Bands in the same area would move up or down accordingly, checking always that the answer looks 'about right' for the upper and lower Bands. So keeping the tax base up to date is a very minor issue and will cost pennies per year per home/plot

- If we significantly reduce taxes on earned income (by £200 billion), disposable incomes of tenants and first-time buyers increases and a lot of that increase will flow through into higher rental values. So even if a few of the initial assessments are a bit toppy, after a couple of years, even those will objectively be on the low side and things will quieten down.

- If more tax is collected from land values and less is collected from output, wages and profits, then selling prices will change. They might go up (because of boost to economy), they might go down (a tax on land depresses its selling price), the two effects might cancel out, this is irrelevant in the long run.