A bereaved man says he has been hit with a “death tax” after inheriting his mother’s home.<\/p>\n
Phil Bond, 68, lost his mother, Eunice, 91, in May and inherited her house in Cardiff, alongside his brother.<\/p>\n
Soon after her death, they received a council tax bill that included a charge for “premium furnished and no-one resident”, doubling the annual amount owed to more than \u00a34,000.<\/p>\n
In Wales, local authorities can charge a council tax premium of up to 300% on furnished second homes – this is what Bond’s mother’s property had been reassigned as.<\/p>\n
Cardiff Council said no council tax exemption was applied automatically following a resident’s death, but circumstances could be considered on request.<\/p>\n
In Cardiff a 100% premium applies to furnished properties that are not anyone’s sole or main residence.<\/p>\n
The premium is intended to encourage bringing empty homes back into use, helping to increase the availability of housing and support sustainable communities.<\/p>\n
But Bond, from Llandaff North, said this premium felt like both a “penalty” and a “death tax”.<\/p>\n
He added: “What I find amazing is the way it’s set up, as if the council expects you to empty the house straightaway and then worry about the funeral after.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bereaved man says he has been hit with a “death tax” after inheriting his mother’s home. Phil…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":886889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[45,49,48,133,131,132],"class_list":["post-886888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}