BBC NEWS | Scotland | Bill seeks to axe council tax: "Bill seeks to axe council tax

A plan to scrap the council tax has been lodged at Holyrood by Scottish Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan.

The SSP leader has put forward a member's bill in the Scottish Parliament proposing to replace the council tax with an income-based alternative.

Earlier this week, Liberal Democrats voted to axe the council tax at their UK conference in Brighton, but the party in Scotland did not make abolition a condition of its coalition deal with Labour in May.

The Scottish Executive has only committed itself to a review of how councils are funded.

'Pensioner's purse'

During First Minister's Questions on Thursday, Mr Sheridan called on Jack McConnell to scrap the council tax.

He highlighted the UK Lib Dem's campaign to replace it with a local income tax of up to 3%.

The current system was 'hammering' the elderly who face rises much larger than increases in their pension, Mr Sheridan said.

He said that five out of Holyrood's seven political parties now wanted to abolish the council tax.

Mr Sheridan told the first minister: 'It's about time that you supported a system based on personal income, that instead of continuing to plunder the pensioner's purse, we started to fleece the fat-cat wallet.' "