Martin Lewis reveals 2 methods to verify should you’re overpaying council tax

Martin Lewis has revealed a quick and easy method to check whether you’re overpaying council tax.

The money saving expert, 52, from Manchester, discussed the topic on today’s episode of Good Morning Britain.

Council tax is a payment made to fund local services including, bin collections, schools, and street repairs. Each household is placed in a band ranging from A to D, which is based on the property’s valuation.

Today, a viewer messaged the ITV show to ask Martin how to check if they’re overpaying council tax.

The money saving expert revealed two easy ways to do so, but warned: ‘Do not complain unless you pass both checks.’

First, Martin said to compare your band with neighbours to see if your payment is higher.

Martin explained: ‘[I have] two checks for you. First, the neighbours. Check with preferably identical, but if not, similar homes. You don’t have to ask them. Go to gov.uk to check your council tax band and saa.gov.uk if in Scotland.’

Next, Martin said to compare your council tax band with the price of your property in 1991, with each price range falling into a different council band.

‘The second check you must do is not evidential, but you do it for peace of mind. You’ve got to work out what your house was worth in 1991 and what band it was in.

‘What you do is you is you find when you bought your property…and you convert it to 1991 prices. Sounds complicated, but there are free tools online that will do it for you.’

However, Martin warned: ‘Do not complain though unless you pass both checks. Only do the appeal if both checks are clear winners, if it’s just the neighbours check, it’s not safe to appeal.’

The expert also explained who is eligible for council tax discounts., saying: ‘If there’s one adult in the house you get a 25 per cent discount.

‘If there are no adults you don’t pay anything. But what’s important to understand is some people don’t count as adults, forgive the phrasing.

‘If you’re under 18 you’re not classed an adult, full time students, and someone with a severe mental impairment…it could be Alzheimer’s, it could be dementia.

‘Therefore, if they live with a partner in the home, they could technically be one adult [classed as living there], so you’re due the single person discount.

He added: ‘Also, [it is] worth saying that if you’ve got low income, if you’re on benefits, and if you get pension credit, it’s council by council whether your get discount.

‘Finally, if you have a disability and you’ve had to alter your home because of it, that you may enable you to be dropped a band’.

It comes after Martin Lewis explained how you can make money simply by changing your bank account.

Speaking on the programme, he said that many people believe that keeping the same account for many years is a good thing.

According to host Ben Shephard, people have got in touch explaining how they feel.

He said that he has heard people say things like: ‘I can’t be bothered to go through all the faff of changing my bank….I’ve been with the same bank all my life. What’s the point if changing if it’s just wages to paying bills?’

On the other side of the argument, some people believe there is no benefit to staying loyal to a specific bank.

Ben said: ‘But [for] a lot of people, their relationship with their bank isn’t usually seen as something that they can change quickly because it takes certainly takes a long time to get to know your bank, to get to know your bank manager, [but] things have changed somewhat over the years.’

He continued: ‘People sort of always felt that they had this relationship with their bank.

‘They knew their private banker, they knew their bank manager and so they didn’t want to change. It’s very different landscape now there isn’t it?’

According to Martin: ‘Absolutely. Most people bank online. Now look, I was going to start this by saying if you love your bank, it gives you great service, you’re happy with it and it tickles your toes whenever you want it to, there’s no need to change.

‘But the whole point is right now there are four banks who are willing to pay you bribe you legally if you like to switch so if you feel just my bank is neither good nor bad, then you may as well get paid to switch you may as well make money from it.’

He added that there are ‘some people who make about a grand a year from regularly switching bank accounts’.

Martin continued: ‘Now what actually happens here is I’m talking about the financial terms of banking.

‘Again, if you have a very good customer service, relationship specific bespoke needs to stay with your bank then don’t bother.

‘But it’s worth knowing what’s out there and so many people find it really really easy to switch bank last time I polled, it was over eighty per cent that said it’s easy and hassle free’.

He added that many of the people who’ve had bad experiences were ‘before they brought in seven day switching, which was about a decade ago and it was a nightmare’.

Now, he explained, to switch, you go through the bank’s seven days switching service (which takes about about 10-days as it is working days).

‘They move your balance over for you. They move standing orders over for you. They move direct debits over for you, they close your old account, and any money paid into the old account is then automatically forwarded to the new one,’ said Martin.

‘So actually, it is a pretty seamless process that happens very easily without much hassle.’

The amount of time it takes to get the money from switching accounts depends on the account, he added.

Martin said: ‘So it takes about a month or two months, so you’ll have the money in your bank account pretty quickly.

‘Let me run through the best ones for you what’s available out there at the moment so people can get it.

‘I’ll do it in order of the upfront cash you get for switching. So NatWest RBS is the top pay – it gives you £200 pounds to switch so £200 quid in your hand, which will be very useful for many people.

‘It also gives you £36 pounds a year cashback. What actually happens, is that you pay it a fee of £2 a month and it gives you cashback of £5 a month, as long as you hit some very basic criteria like having a couple of direct debits going out, and making sure you check in the app once a month. So that’s an extra £36 quid on top.’

Next, he said, is the Santander edge account: ‘It’s been around a while, it’s been one of my top picks, it’s a bills account – it gives you cashback on the bills you pay for it.’

He added there are a couple more, listing Lloyds which is a £375 switching bonus with perks like Disney plus, for a year and HSBC which is a free £100, and you can get 10 pounds a month, but there’s a lot of hoops to jump through to get the 10 pounds a month’.

He concluded: ‘So there are four banks willing to pay people to switch at the moment.

‘As I say, if you’re happy with your bank, don’t do it. If you’re not happy with your bank, why not grab some free cash?

‘The only warning I think…is having a decent long term relationship with your bank can be beneficial for credit and of course applying for a bank you will have to pass a not too harsh credit score.

‘So if you were just about to make a mortgage application or do something really important, credit wise, I wouldn’t do this in the three to six months before that.

‘But if you’ve got nothing going on credit wise and switching bank accounts is a very lucrative way to make money.’