For decades, land has been sold to the highest bidder from anywhere in the world
The revelation that there are a lot of owners of land and property who are resident or registered outside the UK comes as no surprise.
For decades, Scottish land has been available to be sold to the highest bidder from anywhere in the world.
Not only has this pushed up property prices but it has led to tax avoidance as houses and land have been acquired by companies in tax havens.
Top countries for companies owning land in Scotland include the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Luxembourg and the Bahamas.
Ordinary people pay the tax that these companies don’t to pay for the schools and hospitals we all rely on.
But this is the tip of the iceberg because it only takes account of land in the modern land register and not the older Sasines Register.
The data revealed by the Sunday Post today doesn’t include any information on how much land is owned overseas.
My own research shows that 750,000 acres of Scotland is owned in tax havens, posing problems for law enforcement and tax authorities.
The public are denied access to this information because it is hard to obtain and it costs money.
If you want to find out further information about any one of the 1700 companies, it will cost you £30.
If you want to find out about all of them, it will cost a staggering £51,000.
But most shocking of all is that even to obtain a copy of the report published by Registers of Scotland, a public agency, will cost you an astonishing £1560.
The public deserve access to information about who owns Scotland.
It’s time to end the secrecy and the costs and open up Scotland’s land registers to the people for free.