Scottish revenue interactions with UK government: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for:

Please provide total sum of:
Scottish revenue NOT sent to or collected by UK central government?
Scottish revenue sent to/collected by UK central government?
Scottish revenue returned to Scottish government, Scottish local government, Scottish public corporations by UK central government?
Scottish revenue retained by UK central government?

Response

As set out in Chapter 1 of Government Expenditure & Revenue Scotland (GERS), in 2018-19, total tax revenue collected in Scotland was £57.5 billion. This excludes non-tax revenues, which are primarily non-cash accounting adjustments.

Scottish revenue not collected by UK reserved central government in 2018/19 amounted to £5,906. This consisted of council tax (£2,360m), non-domestic rates (£2,847m), Scottish land and buildings transaction tax (£557m), Scottish landfill tax (£143m).

Scottish revenue collected by UK reserved central government amounted to £50,184m. This included income tax, national insurance contributions, value added tax, corporation tax, and several other taxes and duties.

Income tax is a shared tax, and the non-savings non-dividend income tax is returned to the Scottish Government. As set out in Chapter 4 of GERS, this amounted to £11,486m in 2018-19, although the amount received by the Scottish Government will differ slightly as it is based on forecasts and then reconciled.

The difference (£40,128m) will be broadly representative of revenue raised in Scotland and retained by the UK reserved central government. Note that this will be used for a number of purposes, including providing the block grant to the Scottish Government (which is not linked to Scottish revenue), and funding reserved services in Scotland, such as pensions.

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