A COMMITMENT to scrap the council tax, devolve business rates powers to local authorities and allow them to introduce a tourist tax are among the options being considered by the Scottish Greens as prospective demands to Derek Mackay in exchange for supporting next year’s Budget.
Andy Wightman, the Lothian MSP, outlined the possibilities being discussed internally as his party look at drawing up the red lines it will take to the Finance Secretary later this year.
It is a key issue as the SNP minority administration needs the support of another party to get its Budget voted through Holyrood.
The Greens’ six MSPs supported the SNP government’s proposals for the last two years in return for certain conditions including an extra £170m being injected into local government in 2018-19.
But this year co-convener Patrick Harvie said it was the last time the party would back the Budget during the current parliamentary term unless the Scottish Government made “meaningful progress” on local tax reform.
Wightman, the party’s local government spokesman, said the party would be spelling out what they wanted “meaningful progress” to look like later this year but suggested at what direction they wanted ministers to go.
“This is speculative, and I’m not speaking on the authority of the party, but it could be for example a commitment to scrap the council tax by the end of this parliamentary session,” he told The National.
“Such commitments are normally given in the form of a letter. We wouldn’t be talking about introducing legislation before the next Budget. We would be talking about a letter from the Cabinet Secretary to us and other parties saying they are committed to doing this.”
He added: “Another one could be to give more freedom to local authorities to set the non-domestic rate. If there is an agreement to do that, that could be done through secondary legislation, it could be done within eight weeks. They could agree to give [councils] complete freedom over the council tax, no more capping for instance...they could agree to introduce new powers for new taxes like the tourism tax.”
Wightman said that the timescales in terms of getting a commitment from the Scottish Government was less of an issue than what action it was prepared to take.
He said it was the Greens’ wish that the Scottish Government would agree a statement of intent within the next six months, and that the policy moves would be resolved before the next Holyrood election.
The Scottish Greens believe councils should have greater fiscal autonomy to strengthen local democracy and want to see local authorities be able to raise about 50 per cent of their own revenue, up from about 20 per cent currently. They also see the council tax as disproportionately hitting poorer households with people in the lower band paying a higher proportion of their property value than in tax than people at the top. The Green policy is to replace the council tax with a residential property tax of about 1 per cent of a property’s value.
A Green policy document for the 2016 Holyrood election suggested a band D household, presently paying about £1150 council tax, would pay £1500 under a full residential property tax regime and a band H household valued at around £795,000, paying £2300 would see its bill rise to around £7850. A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The Government remains committed to making local taxation more progressive and we have made clear we are open to further dialogue on options for local tax reform.” He said the government was working with COSLA on a review, to ensure communities have more say and had introduced higher reliefs to make the system fairer.
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