Council Tax Collection Statistics 2012-13

Table 2: Summary of in-year Council Tax percentage received, by year to which the bill refers: Scotland and Local Authorities ⁽¹⁾

Source: 2002-03 to 2011-12 - Statutory Performance Indicators published by Audit Scotland, 2012-13 - Information supplied by Councils to Scottish Government on the CTRR statistical return

(1) The figures exclude Council Tax Benefit and Water and Sewerage Charges. They are before any amounts written off for bad or doubtful debt and reflect any correction to liabilities following billing.

(2) 2005-06 onwards - Figures include additional amounts in respect of reduced Second Home/Long Term Empty property discounts

(3) For 2011-12; (4) For 2012-13: These councils have reported their collection rates on a "line by line" accounting basis. The line by line basis can potentially lead to an increase in the collection rate (see background notes); changing from a line by line basis can contribute to a decrease. Earlier statistical collections did not ask councils for information on the accounting basis used.

Table 2

Table 2 shows the council-tax in-year collection rates (that is, the amount of council tax collected by the end of the relevant billing year, as a percentage of billed council tax). In-year collection rates have increased steadily from 87.2% in 1998-99; to 91.4% in 2002-03; to 95.1% in 2012-13, highlighting improvements in the abilities of councils to collect council tax on time. This may in part be due to more efficient collection methods (for example, we know a number of authorities have sought to promote and increase collection of council tax by direct debit and other direct methods).

Improvements are particularly clear for the local authorities which previously had the lowest rates of in-year collection (for example, the in-year collection rate for Glasgow City substantially improved from 83.7% in 2002-03 to 93.1% in 2012-13) hence variation of in-year collection rates between local authorities is now far less pronounced than in earlier years.

The trends described above are clearly illustrated in Chart 1, which shows the increasing in-year collection rate for Scotland and the reduction in variation between collection rates for individual Local Authorities.