Dear Sir
In the current furore over bumping up the top four bands in the Scottish council tax system, the Scottish Government have again repeated a very questionable statistic. That's the claim that Council Tax in Scotland is lower than in England.
The principle both sides of the border is that it is a tax take based on house values, albeit in both cases dating back to valuations in the early 1990's. Both parts of the country have a range A to H; thus a Band G in Aberdeen in 2022/3 might pay £2,700 but in Cambridge £3,200. On the surface, that looks like a bargain for Scots.
The flaw is that a Band G house in England, right from the start, was in a value range about 50% higher than in Scotland. All the bands, in fact, were similarly proportionally higher in England. The discrepancy will be even more pronounced now, due to relatively low growth in Scottish residential property values.
This means that the true tax-to-value penalty for living in Scotland is about to become wider if the proposals are implemented. Many Scots will be paying more than in England relative to actual house values. I challenge the Scottish Government statisticians to demonstrate the true ratios of tax to value, and not lazily assume the bands in Scotland are equivalent, when clearly they are not!
Cllr Peter Smaill
Midlothian East
Conservative
