Council Tax Reduction in Scotland: 2023-2024

5. CTR Impact on Council Tax Income

In Scotland in 2023-24, the total gross Council Tax charged, before CTR, was £3.402 billion and the provisional income forgone due to CTR was £387.6 million. The increase in provisional income forgone due to CTR in 2023-24 compared to the final audited figure of £364.8 million in 2022-23 is likely driven by the increase in Council Tax rates from 2022-23 to 2023-24. This means that in total CTR accounted for 11.4 per cent of total gross Council Tax. This is notably lower than the one-fifth of chargeable dwellings in receipt of CTR quoted in Section 4 due to two main factors. Firstly, roughly a fifth of recipient households receive partial CTR as mentioned in Section 2.5. Secondly, as described in Section 4, the distribution of CTR recipients is heavily skewed towards the lower Council Tax bands with lower annual liability, and so lower CTR awards.

Information on the total value of all reductions under the CTR scheme is collected via two Scottish Government data collections:

• Council Tax Receipts Return (CTRR) – Issued before local authorities’ accounts are audited and so collects provisional, unaudited values for the total reductions under CTR.
• Local Financial Returns (LFR) - Issued after local authorities’ accounts are audited and so collects final, audited values for the total reductions under CTR.

The total value of reductions for each year between 2013-14 and 2023-24 by local authority is shown in the supplementary tables. The 2013-14 to 2022-23 figures have been the subject of audit. The latest 2023-24 figures are provisional. These figures represent an increase of 6.2 per cent in the total value of reductions in Scotland between 2013-14 and 2023-24, compared to an increase of 1.8 per cent between 2013-14 and 2022-23 recorded last year. This is as a result of the increase in CTR scheme costs likely driven by increases in Council Tax rates. 

Only two local authorities have seen a decrease in the total value of reductions due to CTR between 2013-14 and 2023-24. These decreases were seen in Na h-Eileanan Siar (-14 per cent) and West Dunbartonshire (-7.3 per cent). Details of the changes in income forgone are available in the supplementary tables published with this report.