Green MSP to propose alternative to Scottish Government ‘regressive and unfair’ council tax plans

Andy Wightman MSP - Image credit: Scottish Parliament

A Green MSP will today propose an alternative to the Scottish Government’s council tax proposals, which the party describes as “regressive and unfair”.

In a Holyrood debate on reforming local taxation this afternoon, Andy Wightman, the party’s spokesperson for local government, will say that the “outdated system” means that most properties are in the wrong band.

Wightman will put forward an alternative statutory instrument that he says demonstrates how the council tax system can be made “substantially fairer by more closely reflecting property valuations and by mandating a revaluation”. 

The statutory instrument – secondary legislation that allows amendments to an act of parliament – relates to the Local Government Finance Act 1992 and would replace the current eight council tax bands with bands for each £1,000 of a property’s current value, with a tax-free allowance on the first £10,000.

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Although the Greens would ideally like to scrap council tax and replace it with a new residential property tax, Wightman says this alternative proposal demonstrates how the current system “can be made substantially fairer by more closely reflecting property valuations and by mandating a revaluation”.

The Scottish Greens have criticised the Scottish Government’s plans to increase the tax paid by just the upper bands E-H without a revaluation of properties – the last having been in 1991 – and questioned why the Scottish Government was not proposing an increase in the number of bands from the current eight.

Wightman said: “Greens believe the government’s package of reform is timid and fails to meet the ambitions set out by the Commission on Local Tax Reform whose first recommendation was that ‘the present council tax system must end’.

“It’s shocking that is has taken ten months to debate the commission’s findings.

“After nine years of the council tax freeze there is now cross-party consensus that the system is broken. Bold change is needed. It’s time for a fair local tax.”

The Lothians list MSP has also criticised the Scottish Government for denying councils the ability to “vary tax locally and spend revenues on local priorities”.

The Scottish Government has indicated that the projected £100m a year extra raised by raising the top four council tax bands should be spent on education.

Wightman suggested that any direction by ministers in how councils spend locally raised taxes would be in breach of international law by going against the European Charter of Local Self-Government.