CIOT helps Scottish Parliament committee shape its legacy report on tax

As the 2021-26 session of the Scottish Parliament winds down, the committee will present a legacy report to its successor. These reports are intended to pass on knowledge and experience, and may also help inform the successor committee’s priorities for scrutiny in the 2026-31 session.

Last Tuesday, CIOT Technical Officer Lindsay Scott was questioned by MSPs alongside academics, researchers and Scotland’s Auditor General.

Scott told committee convener Kenneth Gibson (SNP) that the Scottish tax system had become more complicated as a result of devolution, and that better awareness of the Scottish Parliament’s powers over tax policy was needed in order to improve political debate, hold leaders to account, and both ensure compliance and the uptake of tax reliefs. She told John Mason (Ind) that it was the Scottish Government who should be ultimately responsible for this work, but that the committee’s successor could have a role to play in holding ministers to account.

Craig Hoy (Con) worried about the increasingly complexity and opaqueness of the tax system as further powers are devolved. Scott suggested his point spoke to a wider need for the committee to look back on the tax powers devolved over the past decade to understand how they have worked and how they could influence future choices.

In a later point, Professor David Heald of the University of Glasgow said the next Scottish Government should take a longer-term approach to tax strategy, saying that it should set out where it wants the tax system to be a decade from now.

There was also acknowledgement of the political challenges linked to council tax reform. Heald said that the Scottish Government’s ongoing consultation on council tax reform had “conveniently pushed (the subject) beyond the Holyrood election” and that there would be “no reform without (cross-party) political agreement.”

Dr Joao Sousa of the Fraser of Allander Institute was sceptical that political consensus would be found. He also spoke to the government’s budget proposal to introduce new council tax bands on homes worth more than £1 million, saying it was ‘strange’ and ‘awkward’ that some of these homes would be revalued just below the threshold and have their new rates ‘ignored’ for the purposes of the wider council tax regime.

The committee is expected to produce its legacy report, with recommendations for its successor, before the Scottish Parliament is dissolved for the election on May 7^th.

You can watch the evidence session on the Scottish Parliament's website by clicking here.