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Scottish government to outline council tax reform plans Highest council tax bands 'to pay more' says Nicola Sturgeon
(35 minutes later)
The Scottish government is to outline its proposals for reforming the council tax system. People in Scotland's four highest council tax bands are to pay more under proposals announced by the Scottish government.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said her party would make local taxes more "progressive" from April 2017 if the SNP was voted back into power in May. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the move would raise £100m a year for education.
An independent commission reported in December that the current system was in need of reform. Under the proposals the average band E household would pay about £2 per week more, and the average household in the highest band about £10 a week more.
At the moment, Scotland's 32 councils typically raise 15p of every pound they spend from council tax. The plans would be introduced if the SNP is re-elected on 5 May.
The cross-party Commission on Local Tax Reform concluded that any new system should continue to be one of "general tax" rather than a "system of charges for specific services". The 75% of Scottish households that live in bands A to D would be unaffected by the changes.
It suggested three options: A further 54,000 households living in bands E to H on low incomes - more than one third of which are pensioner households - would be entitled to an exemption from the changes through the council tax reduction scheme.
Ms Sturgeon, who will make public her approach later, is also expected to propose incentives for councils to boost economic growth by assigning them a share of income tax revenues. The reforms would also provide additional support to families on low incomes across all council tax bands.
She said: "Over nine years, the council tax freeze put in place by this government has helped to keep bills affordable during difficult economic times while ensuring councils are properly funded to provide public services. This would be by extending the relief available to households with children, which the Scottish government said would benefit 77,000 low income families by an average of £173 per year and support an estimated 140,000 children.
"When I established the cross-party Commission on Local Tax Reform in 2015, I wanted to ensure that our commitment to fully understand the impact of taxation on Scottish communities was fulfilled." Council tax bills have been frozen in Scotland since 2007.
'Time to deliver' The government said the changes it had proposed would ensure that bills in every band were lower than they would have been had the freeze not been in place.
Ms Sturgeon added that her plans would "build on the findings" of the commission's report. Across Scotland, average rates in all bands will remain lower than the average in England, it added.
A Scottish Labour spokesman said that the SNP had said for a decade that it would replace the council tax with "something fairer".
He added: "Nicola Sturgeon now has to deliver on her personal promise, otherwise all her talk will be exposed as just posturing."