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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;afantiques, post: 196449, member: 25&quot;]The window tax still exists, just the name was changed,&nbsp; to domestic rates, and then to community charge. The number of windows roughly equates to the number of rooms and is a fair way of estimating the size of a house and hence its value, and has nothing really to do with the price of glass, which was not remarkably expensive at the time of the tax.</p><p>Nowadays someone goes around and values all the houses into a price bracket, and the &#039;community charge&#039; is levied as a percentage of the estimated price. It used to be levied on a percentage of the estimated annual rental value of a house.</p><p>Nowadays it is supposed to cover the expense of local services like rubbish removal and road maintainance. </p><p>But it&#039;s still the old window tax under another name.</p><p><br /></p><p>Bricking up of windows in old houses could be a tax avoidance measure, it could equally mean a re-configuration of rooms in an old house. The tax saving was probably relatively trivial comparted to the loss of amenity.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, it is far easier to attribute these old bricked up windows to the window tax than to find out exactly why it was done, and it is hard not to wonder why, when the specific tax was repealed, the owners did not simply knock out all the bricks and re-install a window.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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