Scottish Budget Update

On 15 December the Scottish Government delivered the first draft Scottish Budget outlining their proposals for 2017/18, when they will have control over the rates and bands of Income Tax for Scottish taxpayers for the first time.

Assuming the proposals are approved by Holyrood, there will be no changes to the rates of Income Tax and these will remain the same as for taxpayers in the rest of the UK i.e. 20%, 40%  and 45%.

There will however be a difference in the basic rate band with the higher rate tax threshold only increasing to £43,430 compared with £45,000 for the rest of the UK. The tax impact is an additional Income Tax liability for Scottish higher rate taxpayers of £314 in 2017/18. The Scottish Government has confirmed that future increases in the higher rate threshold will be limited to the rate of inflation, which means that the differential in tax payable by Scottish tax payers and those in the rest of the UK is likely to increase over time.

Meanwhile, rates of Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT), which is the Scottish equivalent of Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT), have been frozen at their 2016/17 levels for 2017/18.

There are separate rules to identify whether an individual is a Scottish taxpayer and therefore whether the changes to the higher rate tax threshold will affect you.

Please contact your usual AAB advisor or a member of the AAB Private Client tax team if you would like to discuss these changes further.