TORY 'B&B TAX' FIB

From the Council's own web forum, 'Ade' says:

"Conservative leaflet

Having just received the leaflet 'The Island Community', issued by the Isle of Wight Conservative Association, I was intrigued by the item with the sub-heading 'Local Conservatives fight against Labour's B&B tax'. As I was not aware of any such tax having been implemented or even proposed I looked further into this and the following is what I discovered.The Government launched an inquiry into local government funding headed by Sir Michael Lyons (Lyon's Inquiry) back in 2004 which produced an interim report in December 2005. This interim report outlined the consultation that had been undertaken with various interested bodies with a view to producing proposals at the end of 2006. These proposals would produce recommendations on local taxation and how local authorities would raise revenue through local taxation. These new forms of taxation would take over from the present council tax, for example.One of the bodies that the inquiry took evidence from was the Local Government Association (LGA) who had produced a document titled 'Balance of Funding Review'. In this paper the LGA had proposed a tourist tax as one way of supplementing local revenue. The argument being that people visiting and staying in an area benefitted from the services without contributing directly.The Isle of Wight Unitary Authority is a member of the LGA and therefore was a party to this proposal to introduce a tourist tax (B&B tax) being included in the paper that was given to the Lyon's Inquiry.The Lyon's Inquiry interim report Part2 Para 2.100 states quite clearly that there are pros and cons for introducing a tourist tax and certainly does not state at this time whether this would be in the final recommendations. Consequently it is somewhat misleading for the Isle of Wight Conservative Association to label it as 'Labours B&B Tax'."

And the LGA is overwhelmingly under Tory control.....