Completed petition Second Home Tax

We call on the National Assembly for Wales to urge the Welsh Government to take immediate steps to close a legal loophole which allows second home owners in Wales to avoid paying neither council tax nor business rates, at a time when local councils are forced to increase council tax to local ratepayers to plug the shortfall in their budgets.

800 second home owners in Gwynedd are now exploiting a legal loophole to avoid paying any council tax at all by registering their properties as small businesses. They are also exempt from paying business rates because of an anomaly in the system which categorises them as 'small businesses' although they are used as second homes for most of the year. In this financial year this equates to a loss of £1.5M from the public purse in Gwynedd alone; money that could be used towards providing social housing for local people.