Dodgers avoid paying £10m

Fedup with council tax? Then why not simply refuse to pay? As the latest figures from across the Black Country reveal, plenty of folk seem to have opted out of paying their dues.A staggering £10 million was unpaid in council tax last year, with nearly £2.5 million uncollected in Wolverhampton alone.

These sort of figures suggest more than a few hard-up families being unable to meet their bills.

It looks as if hundreds, or even thousands, of people across this region have decided simply to ignore council tax demands.

And why not? In a region with a vast, shifting population of people hopping from home to home, no tax is easier to dodge.

Council tax was designed to cope with people who stay in one property for a long period and who put themselves on the electoral register.

If people choose not to register and to keep moving, they are almost impossible to charge. How, for example, does a council begin to collect the council tax due from Flat 14 when no-one knows who the tenant is, where he works, or when he was last in the building?

It is all very well for Joe Morgan, regional secretary of the GMB union, to demand a crackdown on people cheating the system.

Council tax, rushed into service to plug the gap after the demise of the hated poll tax, has a great inbuilt weakness and turning bills into hard cash is no easy matter.

Is there a better alternative?

As we have stated before, the Liberal-Democrat suggestion of a local income tax, on the line of American state taxes, may be worth examining. Almost anything would be better than council tax in its present form.

But reform is for the future. The task for the present is for councils to redouble their hunt for the defaulters.

Those who refuse to pay up are parasites. Honest people have subsidised them for far too long.

Time for Football Association to act:

It’s the bung wot dun it. We predicted yesterday that our exclusive report of illicit payments in football would set the sport ablaze.

Sure enough, where the Express & Star goes Fleet Street follows. Today’s newspapers have picked up the ball and run with it. The cancer of corruption can no longer be ignored.

Well done, Colin Gordon, for spilling the beans to our man Martin Swain. It took courage for Gordon to tell the truth. Now let’s see the same level of courage at the top of this vastly rich industry.

Let’s see an end to the obscenity of fans’ money being siphoned out of the game in sleazy deals. This buck stops with the Football Association. No more words. Let’s see deeds.