Most countries tax homes as a straight percentage of value. England, Scotland and Wales instead charge a fixed amount per council tax band, set decades ago against out-of-date valuations. This page lines up international and North American rates against two illustrative proportional rates for the UK — 0.50% and 0.65% of value — then estimates what an equivalent rate looks like today, local authority by local authority.
Countries shown here tax residential property as a percentage of its assessed or market value, rather than a flat charge or a coarse band. Dots mark the estimated national average; bars show the typical range across regions or municipalities. The dashed lines are the two illustrative UK rates this page compares everything against.
| Country | Avg. rate | Range | Basis |
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The US and Canada are federations where the effective rate is set locally, so a single national number hides most of the story. These forty cities span each country's full range, from the lowest rates on the Pacific coast and Hawaii to the highest in the industrial Midwest and the Prairies.
Council tax isn't proportional — a typical home in Blackpool and a typical home in Kensington pay broadly similar cash amounts despite a five-to-tenfold gap in value. Dividing each authority's likely annual bill by its estimated median house price shows the effective rate that implies. Points below the dashed lines are already paying less than a 0.50–0.65% proportional tax would charge; points above would gain from switching.
Council tax bands are fixed points on the 1991 (2003 in Wales) valuation scale, not a live median — Band D is simply the reference band councils use to set rates. For England, every figure in this table is real, official data rather than an estimate. Band D comes from GOV.UK's "Council Tax levels set by local authorities in England 2025 to 2026," Table 9 — the exact combined district/unitary + county + police + fire charge for all 296 English billing authorities. The "likely bill" adjustment comes from the MHCLG Council Taxbase statistical collection (October 2025) — the actual return each council files, giving the number of dwellings in each band and the tax base after disabled relief, discounts, second-home/empty-home premiums, and local council tax support; dividing that net tax base by the number of dwellings gives the real average bill per dwelling as a fraction of Band D. Median house price comes from ONS/HM Land Registry, year ending September 2025. England's national ratio from the taxbase data is 0.768, matching the published £1,770-average-per-dwelling-vs-£2,280-Band-D figure almost exactly. In deprived cities the ratio falls much further than band mix alone would suggest, because council tax support claims concentrate there too: Nottingham comes out at 0.50, Liverpool 0.53, Manchester 0.56. Wales and Scotland use different valuation/band systems and aren't in the GOV.UK or MHCLG data, so their Band D and likely-bill ratio still use estimated figures and the modelled ratio curve described below — though Wales's median house prices are also real, from the same ONS release. The raw Band D figure is kept alongside the likely bill for every row so the adjustment is visible.
Sources: Band D from GOV.UK "Council Tax levels set by local authorities in England 2025 to 2026," Table 9. Likely-bill ratio from the MHCLG Council Taxbase statistical collection, October 2025 — Table 1.35 (Band D tax-base equivalents after discounts, premiums and council tax support) ÷ Table 1.01 (total dwellings on the valuation list). Median house price from ONS/HM Land Registry, year ending September 2025. All per English billing authority.
The rates above only count the recurring annual bill. Anyone actually buying the median home today — as a home-mover, not a first-time buyer, and buying their only property — also pays Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) in England and Northern Ireland, Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) in Scotland, or Land Transaction Tax (LTT) in Wales, all charged in progressive bands on the purchase price. Spreading that one-off charge over a ten-year hold and adding it to the annual council tax bill gives an "all-in" rate — closer to what a buyer's true annual cost of ownership looks like.
Everything above is the authority's likely average — but half the point of council tax being banded, not proportional, is that it treats very different homes within one authority almost the same. For England, "90th-percentile band" walks each authority's real MHCLG dwelling count by band (Table 1.01) until it reaches the top tenth of local stock — a genuine, authority-specific answer to "roughly what band is a well-off household in this area in", even though the 1991 valuation boundaries behind that band are decades out of date. That band's statutory multiplier (e.g. Band G is 15/9 of Band D) is applied to the real Band D figure at full rate, with no discount — a 90th-percentile household is not a plausible council tax support claimant, unlike the authority-wide average used elsewhere on this page. The accompanying 90th-percentile price has no equivalent real per-authority data available, so it's modelled: median price × 2.0 nationally (English price-paid percentile data has historically put the 90th percentile at roughly double the median), scaled up or down for each English authority by its real Table 1.01 band dispersion — authorities whose actual housing stock spans a wider band range get a wider assumed price spread too. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland use the flat 2.0× ratio throughout, since no dispersion data exists for them; Northern Ireland's rate doesn't change at all between median and 90th-percentile households, because its capital-value system is genuinely proportional and has no bands to cap or jump between.
| Nation | Local authority | Median house price | Band D (reference) | Likely bill | Rate | Stamp duty (one-off) | Amortised /yr | All-in annual cost | All-in rate | 90th-pct. price | 90th-pct. band | 90th-pct. bill | 90th-pct. rate |
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For England (all 296 rows), every column is real government data — median house price (ONS/HM Land Registry), Band D (GOV.UK) and the likely-bill ratio (MHCLG Council Taxbase) — see "Is Band D the right figure?" above. Wales's median house price is also real (same ONS release); its Band D and likely-bill ratio remain estimates, scaling Band D by a modelled band-mix ratio (0.60–1.35) set by house-price rank within the nation. Scotland's median house price, Band D and ratio are all estimates on the same basis. Northern Ireland does not use council tax bands: annual "rates" are the regional plus district rate poundage applied to a capital value fixed at 2005 levels. The rate shown for NI is that bill expressed against today's estimated price (capital values are approximated at price ÷ 1.7), which is why NI's implied rates cluster tightly around 0.55–0.61% — the nominal poundage is diluted by fifteen-plus years of house-price growth the valuation never caught up with. NI buyers pay SDLT, the same as England.
Stamp duty rates used (standard, non-first-time-buyer, no additional-property surcharge, 2025–26): SDLT (England & NI) 0% to £125k, 2% to £250k, 5% to £925k, 10% to £1.5m, 12% above; LBTT (Scotland) 0% to £145k, 2% to £250k, 5% to £325k, 10% to £750k, 12% above; LTT (Wales) 0% to £225k, 6% to £400k, 7.5% to £750k, 10% to £1.5m, 12% above. Because the nil-rate thresholds sit above most of the cheaper authorities' median price, amortised stamp duty adds little there — it lands hardest on the more expensive authorities, where it can more than double the effective rate a buyer faces today.
The four "90th-pct." columns are the same modelling described in "The 90th-percentile household" above: for England, a real band (walking Table 1.01's dwelling counts to the top decile) and its statutory multiplier applied to the real Band D figure at full rate; for Wales and Scotland, a modelled two-band shift up from the authority's estimated average; for Northern Ireland (not shown as a separate column set, since its rate is unchanged) see the table's rate column, which already applies at any price level.