Misleading claim about ‘council tax exemption’ for Muslims recirculates on Facebook
Claims that Muslims are exempt from paying council tax if living areas within their home are used as a place of worship are once again being shared on social media.
As we’ve explained several times before, this is false. There is no council tax exemption for Muslims—or members of any other religion—who claim their home, or part of it, is used for prayer or worship.
The posts include a screenshot of a public petition on the Parliament.uk website created in 2013.
The screenshot actually shows the petition has a notice attached which warns it has been “identified as misleading”, with a link to our 2019 fact check.
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The only exemption related to religion set out in council tax law is for members of religious communities with “no income or capital” who are “dependent on the community” to provide for their “material needs”. (For example, some nuns may fall within this category.) There is no exemption that applies only to Muslims.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because there is no council tax exemption for domestic property owners who claim their home, or part of it, is used for religious purposes, regardless of their religion.