Manage your council tax online
You have to pay council tax if you're over 18 or over and own or rent a home.
While council tax is normally paid by the person living in a property, there are a few circumstances where the owner is responsible for paying council tax.
These include:
- Empty homes.
- Nursing homes and other similar homes.
- Houses of religious communities.
- Houses in multiple occupation (where rooms are let individually).
- Residences of staff who live in houses which are also occupied by an employer.
- Residences of ministers of religion.
If you're living with someone as a couple, whether you are married, cohabiting or in a civil partnership, you are responsible for the bill as a couple but also individually, regardless of whose name is on the bill.
If a number of people live in a property, there is a process for determining the order of liability.
The order goes as follows:
- A resident owner-occupier who is the freeholder of all or part of the property,
- A resident owner-occupier who is the leaseholder of all or part of the property,
- A resident tenant,
- A resident who lives in the property and who is not a tenant, but has permission to stay there,
- Any other resident living in the property,
- A mortgagee in possession of an owner’s interest, and then
- An owner of the property where no one is the resident
- If you move in, your council tax liability is calculated on a daily basis
