
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 10, 1990                   TAG: 9003102400
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LONDON                                 LENGTH: Medium

BRITISH REVOLT AGAINST 'POLL TAX' INEQUITIES

The winners include Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, the Duke and Duchess of York. They will be paying about $1,400 a year under Britain's new local tax system when they move into their new $8 million country mansion next month, instead of more than $8,000 a year under the old system.

The losers include just about everybody who doesn't own a large house. For example, Prince Charles' butler will pay about $470 in London, $35 more than Charles himself will pay at his rural estate.

Inequities like these, trumpeted loudly in Britain's tabloid press, have helped trigger an explosion of resentment and anger over the new local revenue system, known here as the poll tax.

The new rates in general are far higher than those projected by the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when it rammed the new system through Parliament earlier this year.

The anger spilled over into street violence this week as local councils met to set the new rates.

In Nottingham, protesters dressed like Robin Hood and his Merry Men pushed shaving cream pies into the faces of local councilmen. In the working-class London neighborhood of East Hackney, 60 people were arrested Thursday night after rioters smashed windows, looted shops, overturned a police car and pelted police with rocks and bottles.

For years Thatcher has looked for ways to break Labor's stronghold - local councils whose budgets largely were financed by property taxes. Lower-income apartment renters, who tend to be Labor voters, got high benefits at the expense of Conservative property owners. There was little accountability to those who paid, she argued, and little incentive for the Labor councils to hold back expenditures.

Her solution was to replace real estate taxes with a flat tax on individuals. Except for those exempt because of poverty, every adult in a locality must pay the same rate.

by CNB