A property tax is levied yearly on the value of the land; council tax was once a fair approximation to one but the various freezes have caused it to veer far away from the actual fair market value of the properties. And of course, it's paid by the occupier, not the owner.

> it's paid by the occupier, not the owner.

This is true of property tax in the US as well. Not directly, perhaps, but renters are most definitely paying the property tax for their landlords.

Not true in most U.S. real-estate markets (especially in cities), where rental prices bear very little relationship to costs to the landlord. Prices are set more by a mixture of demand and supply, where supply is more constrained by zoning and planning policy than by maintenance costs. Raising or lowering property taxes in that kind of market will raise or lower profit margins for the landlord, but not raise or lower the prevailing rental prices, which are already set as high as demand allows.

One way to verify that not even landlords believe this "pass on the costs" theory is to see what they lobby for. U.K. landlords are adamant in lobbying against any attempt to convert the council-tax system into a property-tax system, and California landlords strongly lobby against any modification to Proposition 13. If it were equivalent either way with all costs just paid by the renters, landlords wouldn't care enough to lobby.

If rental income is not sufficient to cover property tax and other property maintenance costs, the property either gets sold instead of leased, or the owner is speculating on an increase in the value of the property and just rents to slow the bleeding until the market is willing to pay the target sale price. Self-storage businesses are often used for the latter purpose. If you see a self-storage out in the middle of nowhere, it usually means that someone is betting that area will see a development boom soon.

Property tax hits all landlords in an area in roughly equal measure, so it establishes a rental price floor without any of the illegal and impractical forms of collusion. Rental prices below that floor generally do not exist unless some kind of funny business is going on, because few people are willing to operate a business that continuously loses money without some kind of plan for getting it into positive cash flow.

Later on, if property taxes increase by a marginal amount, rental prices may increase by less than that marginal amount, but they will also eventually cause the cheapest rents to exit the market, as the tax increase causes them to cross the boundary of profitability, so further into the future will increase the surviving rents due to contraction in supply, and possibly increase in demand, depending on what the property taxes get spent on.

As such, if you are a land-owner in the US, and own property that rents at above-median rates, it would benefit you to lobby the local government to increase property tax rates, improve the public school system, and invest in public infrastructure. This tends to force out your cheaper competition, who might then sell out to you or convert to condominiums, and attract new tenants willing to pay higher rents. Tax increases come out of your tenants' pockets. But if you are at the cheapest end of the rent scale, you would likely prefer to lobby for zoning and occupancy restrictions, and to keep property taxes low. Your tenants have a hard limit on what they can afford to pay, and so the tax increases come straight out of your pockets. So there are valid reasons for landlords to lobby, both for and against.

Council tax is paid directly by the tenant, who is liable for it personally, and whose name appears on the demand.

Not exactly, most rent contracts require you to register with the council and pay the tax bill but there is nothing that prevents the property owner from paying the bills for you.

If you rent via an all inclusive scheme then you are not liable for it personally.

As long as someone is paying the tax and no discounts (single occupancy, benefits etc.) are applied on the tax the council doesn't really care who and how many people live on the property.

Renters can claim property tax refunds, at least in my state. I don't quite get why, to be honest, but the concept does exist.

Council Tax is more a general purpose local tax. It contains everything that in other countries would fall in various tax like municipal tax, local authority tax, recycling tax, driveway tax, ... and as such it is paid by the person living in the property, not the person owning the property (leaseholder or landlord).

Property tax would be taxing the landlord or at worst the leaseholder exclusively.

Council tax is not a tax on property values.

The amount that a person has to pay depends on the budget of the local council and the banding of the property that the person lives in.

Technically true, but a given property is placed in a specific band based upon the value of the property.

The only real reason why this isn't a direct link is that the banding is not reassessed regularly.

I do know some people who successfully persuaded their local council to move their property to a lower-priced band based upon the alleged fall in property value..

Wait, what is a property tax if it is not those things?

In the US, the tax is attached to the property. In England, its attached to the occupant. The 15th Duke of Whatever with vacant land doesn't pay anything.

It has advantages and disadvantages. In my city, abandoned property often gets saddled with old tax liens and cannot be given away.

`It has advantages and disadvantages. In my city, abandoned property often gets saddled with old tax liens and cannot be given away. `

Surely this means the land has a negative value, and should get a positive tax, seems silly to have liens that are > than the value of the property.

In Colorado, property with tax liens is seized and auctioned to the highest bidder after a certain period of time.

What state/country do you live in?

If the vacant land has a property on it then he sure does; the owner is liable for a portion of the tax on unoccupied buildings.

A yearly levy, based on a fair market valuation of the property (+ improvements), paid for by the landholder.

To put it another way, a property tax would be paid by the freeholder, not the leaseholder. This wouldn't make much of a difference for renters (as the owner would simply pass the cost on), but for owners of leasehold property it would be a stunning boon (and for freeholders who have sold the lease a disaster).

The fact that this county tax is paid by the leaseholder not the property owner is what was missing from the context. (And it boggles my mind why this is the case.)

England is run by landowners who are really hostile to the idea of property tax. The last big attempt at reforming the ancient "council rates" system in the 90s converted it to a per-person "Poll Tax". This was incredibly unpopular, widely boycotted, and resulted in riots. The system was dialled back to a system based on the value of the property in 1991, paid by the occupiers, with exemptions for students and empty properties, and a 25% discount for people living alone (mostly pensioners).

> with exemptions for [...] empty properties

https://www.gov.uk/council-tax/second-homes-and-empty-proper...

Empty properties are not always exempted. It's up to the council. Sometimes they are, sometimes there's a discount, sometimes there's no discount, sometimes people have to pay extra for empty properties.

Applying it to freeholders of very-long-lease property would be a fiasco for all those "99 year lease" properties that behave almost, but not quite, like freehold.

The owner's ability to pass the cost on depends on the conditions of supply and demand in the market, as always.