WHILE the political make-up of Scotland's town halls has now changed beyond recognition, council tax bills will continue to arrive through letter boxes this month and thereafter.

 

There seems little appetite from any major party to replace the tax, which has been with us since 1993 when it was introduced by John Major's Tory government.

 

The policy was widely viewed as a political fix, when it was unveiled in 1991 ahead of the hotly contested 1992 General Election, to allow the Tories to dump Margaret Thatcher's reviled Poll tax.

 

So why nearly a quarter of a century on is a tax that critics claims is regressive and based on outdated property values still in place despite ample opportunities for non-Tory politicians to scrap what many see as a relic from the Major years?

 

"You wouldn't have envisaged that it would last as long as it has," said Dr Neil McGarvey, a politics lecturer at Strathclyde University, when asked about the council tax.

 

"You would have thought something would have been done," he adds in a reference to it remaining in place despite 13 years of UK Labour government, eight years of Scottish devolution under the Labour-Lib Dem administration and the subsequent 10 years of SNP rule.

 

McGarvey, a local government expert, said the tax was the baby of the then environment secretary Michael Heseltine when it was announced as a replacement by the politician who had sought to replace Thatcher at the height of her Poll tax unpopularity.

 

"Major competed with Heseltine for the leadership and Major gave him a puppy and that's how he came up with the council tax," said McGarvey on how the property tax based on two elements - the number of adults living there and the value of the property - came into being.

 

McGarvey said the tax wasn't progressive, and took no account of a person's ability to pay, adding: "But it's a tax designed by the Tories so what else would you expect."

 

He added: "Heseltine's council tax was a compromise between the old rates system and the Poll tax."

 

It's a claim that again comes back to the question of why this piece of legislation introduced by Major's government has remained in place.

 

"Nobody wants to touch local tax because of the political dynamics that you create winners and losers and there's a perception that you create more losers than winners," says McGarvey.

 

"The SNP is risk averse because of the constitution," claims McGarvey when asked why the party is still presiding over such a system from the pre-devolution era.

 

McGarvey suggested the unpopularity of the tax is partly explained by it not being taxed at source like income tax and instead meaning a large monthly charge is debited from bank accounts.

 

He said: "A big problem with the council tax is that you get a hefty bill that comes off your bank account rather than your wage. If it was an income tax and based on ability to pay people might accept it more psychologically."

 

The SNP campaigned heavily on its flagship council tax freeze until ending the policy after nine years in 2016 at around the time Nicola Sturgeon set out reforms to the tax.

 

Former SNP local government minister Marco Biagi helped formulate the plan that eventually saw MSPs vote to increase the top four bands of council tax rather than go for outright abolition.

 

Biagi, who had left Holyrood by the time this was passed, faced accusations from opposition MSPs of failing to back radical enough changes. It was a process that included the establishment of the Commission on Local Tax Reform - a cross party group set up to examine alternatives to the council tax.

 

"The biggest problem is that people have a very difficult definition of what's fair and there are a lot of forces that are always pushing for the status quo," said Biagi.

 

It's worth at this point remembering that the SNP first came to power in 2007 on the back of a pledge to replace council tax with a Local Income Tax (LIT). The policy would have replaced council tax with a centrally set flat rate of 3p in the pound added to normal income tax.

 

However, the policy was shelved by Alex Salmond soon after his minority government initially failed to gets its budget through Holyrood in early 2009.

 

At the 2011 election, when the SNP would go onto win an overall majority, the commitment did not appear in the party's prospectus.

 

SNP ministers even went to court in a bid to keep secret the cost implications of their plans, in a move indicating just how politically sensitive council taxation remained. However, Biagi suggested it remains unfinished business for the SNP.

 

"This is an area where more needs to be done," he said, adding: "You can't just look at the current system and say job done. The problem for the left is to find a solution that everyone can work around, although there are plenty of utopian solutions."

 

Like many past and present politicians Biagi is far from certain what solution is now needed, but suggested a better replacement could have been to have different sets of taxes linked to income as well as property.

 

But for supporters of the council tax, it's the uncertainty from critics over any proposed replacement that they claim makes the case for the status quo a compelling one.

 

Scottish Tory finance spokesperson Murdo Fraser said: "The reality is that there is no perfect system of local taxation and until someone comes up with a workable alternative that is as efficient, we believe the existing system should remain in place. Local income tax would make Scotland unique as a country that didn't include property as wealth."

 

However, Geoff Mawdsley, director of the Reform Scotland think tank, said: “The starting point should be devolving full control over council tax and business rates to local authorities which would then be able to introduce new taxes or scrap existing ones as they see fit.”

 

One of Scotland’s leading economists, Professor Mike Danson of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, said the current arrangement is "flawed", adding that "the UK has got one of the most regressive tax systems".

 

Danson still backs the idea of the Scottish Service Tax - based solely on income - something that was championed by the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) during the party's high watermark when it held six MSPs after the 2003 election.

 

"You could introduce a progressive element" to replace council tax says Danson - a move he says would leave low income households paying less than under the current arrangements.

 

Meanwhile, former SNP cabinet minister Alex Neil said faults with the council tax could not be permanently left unaddressed despite the opposition his party faced to scrapping it during the 2007-2011 parliament.

 

Neil said: "It is an unfair tax, but the problem comes in trying to get an arrangement about what should replace it. Clearly we were scuppered in our first parliament from 2007 onwards. But there still needs to be a debate about having a more robust system."

 

It's a call that has attracted cross party support, with Labour MSP Neil Findlay claiming a key weakness of the council tax is that it's based on property values from 1991. Findlay said: "It's a dog's breakfast of different systems. The bottom line is that people need to come together and have a serious conversation. To still have something operating on house values of the early 1990s is absurd."

 

Scottish Green local government spokesperson Andy Wightman, claimed the SNP had "bottled" the opportunity to replace council tax with a progressive system of local taxation based on wealth.

 

Wightman, a Lothians MSP, said: "The public is up for a conversation on this and our intention is to open up that conversation. But the SNP bottled the opportunity and has just tweaked council tax."

 

However, academics claimed that despite cross party support for an overhaul of council tax, there was a lack of political will at the highest level in government.

 

Professor Ken Gibb, a housing economist at Glasgow University, said: "The council tax was a political fix in 1991 to get the Tories out of the Poll Tax and it's ridiculous to still have taxes based on property values from that time. But there's no willingness to address the key issues."

 

Dr Malcolm Harvey from Aberdeen University's school of social science, said the fact that abolition of the council tax had not been a key election issue showed it was "a dead duck politically".

 

Harvey said: "There are a range of options and undeniably there are ways to do it. But you can have as many options as you want, but if there's not the political will to do it then it's very unlikely to happen. The SNP doesn't want to rock the boat when there's the prospect of an independence referendum."

 

However, the head of an influential think tank backed the introduction of a revalued property tax linked to a property's value, alongside protections for those on low incomes, in a detailed proposal that may yet offer hope to those who back change.

 

Russell Gunson, director of IPPR Scotland, said: "This would ensure that, alongside the Scottish Government's more progressive income tax policy, we could establish a progressive property-related tax, that would bring greater fairness to the tax system as a whole.

 

"Making further changes to council tax in this way could ensure that some of the huge property value increases we've seen over recent decades could be harnessed for the public good, raising tax revenue that could be spent on crucial public services, and pooling just some of that wealth collectively for the benefit of Scotland as a whole."