Chamber and committees

It seems that no specific data is being collected.

I am happy to share the list with you and the committee.

I want to come back to all these anomalies that in aggregate—in my mind, at least—create a concern about the final figure. I am looking at the service level agreement of December 2023 and the first bullet point in clause 23, which says:

“HMRC will identify the Scottish taxpayer population and collect from it the correct rates of SIT to ensure the Scottish Government receives the correct amount of income tax revenue each year”.

Can you put your hand on your heart and say that that is the case?

Are there areas in which better data would be helpful?

It does not say that you are going to do your best.

But just to clarify that particular point, in response to questions from the committee, the C and AG stated:

“Our conclusion that the methodology is reasonable is not the same as saying that we are giving assurance on the number itself. That is an important distinction in audit terms.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 22 February 2024; c 7.]

The C and AG is therefore not saying that your figures are accurate; he is saying that the methodology is acceptable.

I come back to the service level agreement, which says that

“key requirements have been identified for HMRC’s operation and administration of the SIT powers”.

Under that, the first bullet point is:

“identify and maintain an accurate and robust record of the SIT taxpayer population”.

That is a strong statement, but I am not sure that it is borne out by what we have heard. The second bullet point refers to allowing

“HMRC to collect and account for the correct amount of income tax revenue due to the Scottish Government”,

which goes back to having correct, robust and accurate assurances, and all the rest of it. I am not sure that we have that.

Are we actually complying with the service level agreement, or is it just a statement of intent?

For the past several years, I have been expressing concern about the accuracy of the figures that we get for Scottish income tax. Indeed, in 2021-22, I extracted lists of all the areas in which HMRC had used estimates, guesstimates, UK-based averages and other things, all of which, in aggregate, bring considerable uncertainty to the actual amount of income tax that relates to Scotland. Clearly, I did not bother doing the same thing this year, because there has been no change. Nothing has happened, and there has been no improvement in the accuracy of the figures or in eliminating some of the anomalies that so obviously and clearly exist. Does HMRC have a plan to eliminate such concerns?

Quite a few of these issues are Scotland related. I can understand that, in the UK context, there are well-tried and established procedures, and if it were the same for Scotland, that would be more acceptable. After all, there will always be a slight uncertainty. However, there are 30-odd areas here in which you are basically sticking your finger in the air and hoping that the figures will be right. Surely some work should be done on some of these Scotland-specific issues to try to drill down to get the right figures and to eliminate anomalies.

Has the commission made any assessment of the impact of reduced capital budgets on the net zero ambitions of local government?

Does the Accounts Commission take net zero into account in its audits?