Bill could limit Holyrood’s tax powers

A tax expert has told MSPS he’s “very concerned” that the UK government’ s Internal Markets Bill would have an impact on the Scottish Government’ s ability to offer tax breaks to businesses.

Dr Dominic de Cogan, of Cambridge University’ s Centre for Tax Law said the controversial legislation could be “an opportunity for the Westminster Parliament to interfere with the tax devolution settlement”.

Dr de Cogan was giving evidence on the bill and its potential impact on devolved matters to MSPS on Holyro o d’s finance and constituion committee yesterday. He said while he had thought tax was excluded from the whole bill, the government’s White Paper had “mentioned a tax break as something that constituted a harmful subsidy, and those that currenly exist do not seem to preserved by the act”.

“It’s saying you might have been giving this business rate break, or you may have plans to develop your tax system in this way, but that may constitute a distored or harmful subsidy and as it’s a areserved matter we now have a degree of control over that,” he said.