SCOTLAND must bring in a land value tax – and the SNP have been looking at ways to make it happen, the former finance secretary has said.
Shona Robison, who served in the SNP government for 19 years and as an MSP for 27, but stepped down at the Holyrood elections in May, said ministers should “definitely” bring in a land value tax in an interview with the Scottish Left Review (SLR).
Speaking to the magazine’s editor Cailean Gallagher, the former finance secretary said: “We've been attempting to look at ways forward in the land value taxation space.
“The Scottish Land Commission is looking at it, but it is far from simple and requires a proper valuation of the land mass in terms of who owns what. That's going to take some time.
“That doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. It definitely should. But you've got to have all of the infrastructure and the building blocks in place, which would then lend itself for us to look at different taxation systems.”
A land value tax is a regular levy on the underlying value of land, based on its location and permitted use, excluding any buildings or improvements. There may be exemptions for values below a certain threshold, or land used for agriculture or primary dwellings.
In her first major interview since leaving office, Robison also addressed the possibility of a wealth tax – a levy on the total value of what someone owns.
The former finance secretary suggested that if not for “clever blockages” in the Scotland Act – the legislation which re-established the Scottish parliament and defined its powers – a wealth tax would “already” be in place.
She told the SLR: “Any new tax has to have the UK Government’s agreement. So clearly, a wealth tax is not going to be straightforward, by any manner or means.
“So I do think that sometimes – and Green colleagues, I think, sometimes fall into this trap – other parties make things sound very simple. Why don't we just do this, and why don't we just do that? If it were simple, it would have already been done.
“The fact is that it's not simple, whether it's negotiating with the UK Government or just having the infrastructure and data that's required to shift the balance of taxation. I'm a big supporter of all of that, but it is far from straightforward under the devolved powers.”
Robison said that the Scottish devolution settlement meant that the policy changes the SNP Government can get through do not always have the impact they could with independence.
“We have used the income tax powers pretty much to the maximum,” she told the SLR. “I would call that progressive. It’s the UK Government tax system that is not progressive. The idea that someone earning 40-something thousand pounds should be in the same tax bracket as somebody on nearly £100,000 is just inherently unfair.
“So we raise taxes, but through the complexity of the fiscal framework, you actually end up not raising as much as you would otherwise.”
Robison further told the SLR that she believed that “quite often the media and opposition parties talk about the government in Scotland as if it has all the powers of an independent nation”.
However, she said that devolution means “blockages” appear, often in the form of an “increasingly hostile UK Government”.
Robison added that the last time the Scottish and UK Governments worked in genuine co-operation was under David Cameron.
The devolution settlement prevents the creation of a new national‑level devolved tax without UK Parliament consent. However, the Scottish Parliament has the power to create new local taxes that fund local authority spending.
A report from the Common Weal think tank, Taxing Land In Scotland, previously found that a land valuation tax controlled by local authorities could raise around £450 million annually, with Highland Council being the biggest beneficiary, raising £97m annually.
The Common Weal paper said that Australia, Denmark, and Estonia all currently have land valuation taxes controlled at state or local level. In Australia, a 4% surcharge is also levied on foreign landowners.
The report further noted: “Unusual among countries, Denmark charges Danish citizens a land tax on their land owned outwith Denmark, which results in Scotland’s largest landowner – Anders Povlsen – already paying a land tax on his Scottish estates, but making these payments to Denmark, not Scotland.”
Hamish Trench, the chief executive of the Scottish Land Commission, said in a 2024 article for The National that the case for a land value tax is “compelling [but] introducing it in practice has proved more challenging”.
He said that any land tax would require “groundwork” to be done in advance, including “completing a comprehensive land register and developing a cadastral system to bring together data on land ownership, use, and value”.
The Scottish Government did not respond to a request for comment.
