Published: 4 December, 2013
By RICHARD OSLEY

MAYOR of London Boris Johnson insisted on Thursday that Camden residents should be paying more in council tax.

Speaking during a meeting with traders in West Hampstead, he said politicians “did not have the guts” to change things and as a result small businesses were filling the gaps with astronomical rates paid to the Town Hall.

Mr Johnson said councils such as Camden were charging such high levels of business rates that small traders were “getting stuffed”. Instead money needed to be brought in from “property tax” – a term he later confirmed he was using to mean council tax.

He was fielding questions at the Wet Fish Café in West End Lane during a session chaired by West Hampstead Life blogger Jonathan Turton.

“We’ve got the whole local taxation thing completely out of whack,” said Mr Johnson. “If I’m totally honest I think people aren’t paying enough for their properties and businesses are paying too much, particularly at the top end.”

He took great pains to tell the audience that he did not support a “mansion tax”, insisting he was “totally against that”.

But Mr Johnson, who grew up in Primrose Hill, added: “If you look at the balance,  in terms of economic benefits, of helping businesses, I think it’s skewed in the wrong way. Look at a rival city like New York. They pay huge sums. I don’t want to go there, but they pay far far more in property tax.”

He said the problem lay with councils such as Camden demanding too much in business rates and the fact “no politician has got the guts to do a revaluation – everyone is terrified of it”.

Successive administrations at the Town Hall have aimed for council tax freezes over the best part of a decade.

Mr Johnson said: “Small businesses are being stuffed because councils are getting stretched in different directions.”