Town halls fail to collect £1.3bn of council tax
SCOTLAND’S cashstrapped local authorities have been left with a financial black hole of nearly £1.3billion after failing to collect council tax.
More than £93million was unpaid last year – up 20 per cent on the previous year, figures show.
In total, the country’s 32 local authorities are owed £1,270,673,000, with debts dating back to 1993, when council tax was introduced.
It comes amid town hall chiefs increasing council tax bills in an effort to tackle budget cuts set by the Scottish Government, with fears that vital services could be slashed.
Yesterday, politicians and campaigners criticised councils for failing to collect vast sums of cash and demanded that the Government helps to tackle the problem.
Scottish Tory local government spokesman Alexander Stewart said: ‘It’s completely unacceptable for councils to be owed this much money.’
Official Scottish Government figures reveal local authorities failed to collect £93,215,000 of council tax from last year, up from £77,623,000 from 2016/17. The collection rate in 2017/18 was just 96 per cent, down from 96.4 per cent the previous year and 96.7 per cent in 2015/16.
Mr Stewart said: ‘No one expects there to be a 100 per cent hit rate in terms of collecting council tax.
‘But allowing the unpaid bill to approach £100million is verging on negligence at a time when local authorities can least afford it. Instead of cutting their budgets, the SNP should be helping councils with ways of recovering these debts.’
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘It’s ludicrous that councils can complain about a lack of funds when they have failed to collect more than £1billion from those who should have paid.
‘The higher calls for spending will then fall more heavily on those taxpayers who have done the right
‘Should redouble their efforts’
thing, which is completely unfair. The councils should redouble their efforts to collect this money.’
Dundee City had the lowest collection rate of only 93.9 per cent, followed by East Ayrshire and North Lanarkshire on 94.2 per cent and North Ayrshire on 94.8 per cent.
Orkney Islands had the highest collection rate of 97.9 per cent.
Scottish local authorities were forced to put up council tax bills by 3 per cent this year after a reduction in budgets from the Scottish Government. Council chiefs warned vital services such as education, social care, bin collections and roads could face cuts without more funding.
They have now called for additional money-making powers – such as having the authority to introduce a tourist tax in certain cities such as Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Last night, a Cosla spokesman said that despite the Government classifying money as ‘uncollected’ this was not the case – and it is ‘unpaid’.
He said: ‘Scotland’s councils have a very good record in relation to council tax collection. Councils take their duties seriously to ensure what is owed to them is collected, fully realising that every pound collected is a pound for frontline services.
‘We need to be clear that the amounts which are outstanding are unpaid, not uncollected, and any sums not paid represent lost revenue to councils.’
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘Councils should take all practical steps and use their powers to collect the unpaid tax due to them, especially in cases where households are wilfully avoiding payment, as this is unfair on the overwhelming majority of people who do pay their taxes.’
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