Council Tax - Why the unequal amounts?

[Trojanfarce]

I guess this may have been asked before but I can't seem to find an answer. Having just had my council tax bill in for the year (which I'm not too unhappy with in the grand scheme of things), as always, there's an initial payment that is higher than the following 9 installments.

Why is this? Why don't they just take the amount and divide by ten?

[Loosehead]

They can do that only if it's a whole number of pounds, banks do not deal in less than 1p so the council generally take off the odd pence divide by 10 and add the odd pence on to the first payment.

[Trojanfarce]

Thanks for that Loosehead, it kind of makes you wonder why they don't just round it all up though for convenience. Hoping for them to round it down would be too much to ask, I reckon!

[ianess]

I can't understand why they don't use the same system as the utility companies and charge 1/12 of the annual estimate per month and just adjust your direct debit once per year to take care of any changes.