Should the rich subsidise council tax bills?

As someone on a low-ish wage (well, less than £200k) then I'd say yes! But realistically, this is not going to go down well ... can you image what the Torys would say! Gordon Brown would risk losing loads of votes from people on high salaries (all those City Boys) and he would never do that. Plus it would lead to people fiddling their salaries to avoid having to pay more income tax... sorry, but the more I think about it this is a stupid idea but it's scary that it has actually been proposed.

Here's another question - should think-tanks be forced to come up with useful ideas rather than just stuff that gets headlines but is totally bonkers?

The rich already subsidise council tax bills! Most of the money spent by councils goes on education, healthcare, social services and roads. Anyone earning over £200k is proabably paying the top rate of council tax but not getting anything back in return. Most likely their children are educated privately, they have private healthcare and dont use the roads becuase they need to work 14+ hours a day to earn that amount! Instead of always looking for someone else to shoulder the burden of rising council tax, why not ask why it is so high in the first place and why it has to go up by 4%? I dont see any think-tanks tackling that one!

I hate it when the wealthy whinge about council tax...rather than basing the rate of council tax you pay on the size of your property (just because you have a big doesn't mean you're rich) it should depend on your income.
Hear hear to the pensioners who are risking jail to highlight just how unfair this is.

What do you mean by "subsidise". In theory the rich have always subsidised the poor, its the basis on which our society works. However, in recent years, and since Mrs T scrapped the higher taxation rates, the rich have pushed ahead in the finance stakes well away from the majority of us.

Our public finance model has been tinkered with by successive Governments so much over the years that it is now almost totally useless. It would be a brave politician, not something that they are known for, that proposes a really radical overhaul.

How about getting another off the shelf from one of our European neighbours. Any suggestions which one.?

Council Tax is an unfair tax anyway. It ignores how many wage earners there are in a property; all persons in the property are eligible to use the council's services. The original valuations for CT were codswallop - unfairly guessed at by estate agents' estimates of what properties offered in an area, and what their values might have been at the time.... Mega rich people pay CT up to a ceiling band, then no more, thus the big property can be many times larger than a property on the lower bands, yet once the ceiling band is reached it is "free" of CT thereafter. Local taxation should be raised by national taxation which would cut out all the daft argument between one lot of penpushers at local level and another at national level. Local government pensions swallow over 23% of the CT take. There are also the inflated salaries of the CEO class, councillors (who used to work gratis) and expenses(limitless)to pay for before any services are costed. CT is not ring-fenced to a collection area. National government has found it very handy to raid the CT till, pushing CT to other areas in need of regeneration. Face it citizens, especially those retired and on lower incomes, we are victims of yet another government stealth tax.
On top of all that, the collection of CT is open to abuse as many Councils will admit if pressed. The write-offs per annum are horrendous caused by itinerant workers and multi-occupation addresses.