Sir: The rates were sometimes unfair but in fact most
people live in the house they can afford. You find few millionaires in three- bedroom semis and few paupers in castles.
Most people in our society are reason- ably prosperous but a large minority are not. So far as anyone knows the only people who will get rebates on their poll tax are those already living on Social Security or in some kind of institutional care. The average pensioner couple live on about £6,000 a year and the average poll tax is around £340 — about 11 per cent of gross income. Would you be happy to pay such a tax at this rate?
The poll tax is grossly improper — the rich will pay less and the poor will pay a great deal more. It appears to have not been properly thought through (not with- standing a year's trial in Scotland), so that it is causing chaos in local government and bitter dissension everywhere — even those who will benefit are unhappy. The final blow is to find that we are in the hands of a government which, besides all else, was able to get the initial calculation of liability to the tax so very wrong. Was this incom- petence or duplicity?
Hazel Sweetman
299 Old Worting Road, Basingstoke, Hampshire
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