Well, technically they're annual, but you're allowed to pay them in arrears over 10 or 12 months.

Council taxes could be considered propertie taxes, I guess, though I've always thought of them as paying for rubbish collection & etc.

However council taxes are paid by the residents of a property rather than the owner of a property. Granted these are often the same, but consider the case of a landlord with five properties the tenants would be paying those.

In the sense that Americans talk about property taxes as an annual thing I believe that distinction makes it a slightly different thing..

(And council tax is only a thing for property, if you buy a chunk of land with no houses upon it you pay nothing.)

They're not exactly proportional to the value of the property though are they? There's folks in London with multi-million pound mansions who pay the same or less in council tax than a family home in the suburbs.