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Hello,

I recently got my ILR approved in June 2014. I was going through the guidance for British citizenship [link given at the end] and discovered that they check for council tax payments as a part of all the checks carried out for an application.
My main concern is about 2 years ago, I was renting privately with a landlord and was paying the rent inclusive of all bills including the council tax. However, I later discovered that the landlord had been claiming single person discount and I ended up moving out somewhere else subsequently.
My main concern is,
1) This incident would have happened within the last 5 years when i submit my application for passport.
2) The address where this happened would be on my application form
3) Even though I was paying all my bills and tax as far as I was concerned, will the landlord's misdeed get me in trouble?
4) Does anyone know what kind of checks are carried out with regards to council tax?

Please advise me as I am quite concerned about my passport application next year now. Thanks.

This is the snippet from the link below

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... annexd.pdf

6.4 Non-Payment of Council Tax
The decision maker will not normally refuse an application where the person has been unable
to pay Council Tax because of their financial position. This is particularly true if some sort of
arrangement is being, or has been, negotiated with the relevant authority.
However, payment of Council Tax is a legal requirement and non-compliance is a punishable
offence. Therefore, a decision maker will normally refuse an application where a person has:
a. unreasonably failed to pay, or
b. provided a false statement or statements – including failing to declare their full
circumstances – to avoid paying the correct rate.

Bumping this thread. So many views and no reply. Please if anyone can guide me in this, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

You are worried over nothing, IMO. If any checks are done at all, I think their goal is to find out, with the local authorities, if you are on the list of people who were supposed to pay council tax, but failed to do so. From the very beginning, the council tax in your flat was paid in landlord's name, and therefore he's the one who is responsible for whatever exemptions he applied for. You cannot be held responsible for whatever actions he took (and I would actually steer clear from his affairs- the less you know, the better. You are not the police or the private investigator).

Thanks for the response. I was a bit worried about that but I guess it should not be an issue. The council tax checks is described so vaguely that it's hard to gauge the nature of their checks.