£400,000 ...What six top ‘tartan taxmen’ cost taxpayers
TOP bosses at Scotland’s new tax collection agency have been awarded salary packages worth £400,000 a year.
The six public sector officials put in charge of Revenue Scotland have been given bumper salaries – adding to concerns the new quango will swallow too much taxpayers’ money.
The top team at the ‘tartan taxman’ is headed by chief executive Eleanor Emberson, on a salary of around £95,000.
The other senior employees are being paid between £54,000 and £118,000 a year, Revenue Scotland confirmed yesterday.
Details of the salaries came after it emerged the cost of setting up the agency had rocketed before it had collected a penny of tax.
Scottish Conservative MSP Alex Johnstone said: ‘Of course Revenue Scotland needs to pay the going rate to secure the staff it needs.
‘But taxpayers will be concerned that the SNP is willing to throw this much money at an organisation which is already shaping up to be expensive to run.’
Ms Emberson was appointed in 2012 to lead the process of creating Revenue Scotland, while the other five members of the senior management team have been recruited in recent months as it gears up to become operational in April.
From then, the Scottish parliament will be responsible for a new replacement for stamp duty, which will be paid to Revenue Scotland rather than HMRC.
It will also be responsible for collecting landfill tax, which is paid by businesses.
This will be the first time in more than 300 years that taxes raised in Scotland will be collected by a Scottish agency.
Some opposition politicians opposed the creation of Revenue Scotland, saying it would have been cheaper to get HMRC to continue to collect all taxes raised in Scotland.
The Scottish Government estimates it will cost £4.3 million to operate Revenue Scotland in its first year.
But its estimates have rocketed by 59 per cent compared to the £2.7 million annual bill planned when Alex Salmond proposed a new body to manage Scotland’s taxes in 2012.
A spokesman for the TaxpayerScotland pressure group said: ‘We have to cut back on the number of quangos eating up taxpayers’ cash. Highly paid senior staff only add to the bill.
‘The cost of politics, bureaucracy and administration should be going down, not up, especially when we’re trying to make savings in every other area.’
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘Revenue Scotland is on track to manage collection of the new devolved taxes from April 2015. It will be delivering the same service at less cost than HMRC would have done on a like-for-like basis.
‘Establishing a new tax collection agency is a major operation and Revenue Scotland has staff and plans in place to ensure smooth delivery of the new service.’
Ms Emberson has already faced criticism from MSPs after she told a Holyrood committee that there was ‘nothing negative that I need to report’ about setting up the new body last November – only for public spending watchdog Audit Scotland to warn a month later that there was an increased risk that Revenue Scotland would not be ready in time for April.
Auditor General Caroline Gardner warned that ministers ‘must ensure staff and systems are fully in place’ to manage the extra responsibilities of the new scheme.
The Audit Scotland report also warned that set-up problems could delay payments being processed and lead to a further cost in collection.
SNP ministers have faced calls to come up with a contingency plan in case the organisation is not ready to collect the new taxes in April.
When Revenue Scotland is fully operational, it is expected to have 40 staff.
Earlier this month, Finance Secretary John Swinney said 21 of the 40 have been recruited.
He also insisted that it will be ready to collect the new taxes in time for April.
‘We have to cut back on the number of quangos’
TAX is an issue most Scots are very clear on: our bills are high enough. A poll for this newspaper shows that, with control of income tax about to be handed to Holyrood, only a tiny fraction of Scots would tolerate paying more.
At the same time it has emerged that bosses at Revenue Scotland, the body created to collect the Scottish Government’s new property and landfill taxes, will also collect salaries totalling more than £400,000 a year.
The SNP must learn that new powers to raise money bring renewed responsibility to spend that money wisely. Voters will not endure additional costs to pay for more officials to collect extra taxes.