Nobody is. There’s a right to give a discount for “class or classes of person” - soldiers serving overseas was a recent one. A legal test case nearly happened in 2003-4 when one Council considered a class discount for pensioners, but it backed down in the face of a human rights challenge from other taxpayers. It may have won, actually - the problem is that the Government wouldn’t make up the shortfall, and it’s hard to see where the cash to maintain services would then come from, given that the increase in regular council tax is fairly tightly capped by the Government at present.

You (correctly) point out the huge effective marginal rates of tax (due to reduction of benefits) that one is faced with as a low-income earner are a strong disincentive to work.

You suggest the increase in the minimum wage, the reduction of benefits or the reduction of council tax as possible solutions.

The first isn’t necessary, and you give an example of this in your comment. You point out that your husband finds it hard to attract employees at the minimum wage. This tells him that he needs to offer more money if he wants to attract good staff. If it’s not worth his while to pay more money for the job, he wouldn’t offer the jobs at all if the minimum wage were higher. A minimum wage is a tool that (under the right conditions) can raise the income of those in work, but it won’t help at all in this case.

Your second suggestion (reduce benefits) would indeed make working at the minimum wage relatively more attractive. It’s not really an action that a party even pretending to be a bit socialist could take, though, is it?

Your third suggestion (extending council tax relief, so that the widthdrawl of council tax benefits was more gradual with increasing income) would decrease the effective marginal rate of taxation at the low end of the income scale a little, and so would act to incentivise work a little. I’m not sure whether or not it is within the power of the council to do this, though.

You are right that the large marginal rate of tax faced by the working poor is a problem (a problem that the Labour government doesn’t seem interested in solving). The difficulty is that all the good solutions require national legislation.

My husband is a manager of an Oxford business down Cowley Centre way, and he has had a few interested applicants ring up in response to job advertisements. When they find that the job only pays minimum wage, they are not interested - currently, one gets more cash in hand on benefits with council tax exemption than one does working minimum wage with minimal council tax exemption. It’s ridiculous - these are people who would like to work, for pity’s sake, but they don’t want to see a drop in their income if they do so.

I suppose one could argue that the minimum wage should go up - or that benefits should go down. I would prefer to argue that council taxes for the working classes should be realistically re-appraised given Oxford’s ridiculous property values.

If anything it could understate the problem. As Antonia rightly points out it is possible to be working and poor but it is also possible to be inelligible for benefits or not claiming for other reasons.

In many cases there is only one parent for whom the very presence of the children makes them unable to work.