In early 2025, the Committee held a short inquiry on the potential for changes to the current council tax system in Scotland. The inquiry involved taking evidence from stakeholders on the following key themes:

• Progress made by the Joint Working Group on Sources of Local Government Funding and Council Tax Reform since its first meeting in 2022

• Barriers to change in this area

• Ways in which barriers to change could be addressed

• Arguments for and against a revaluation of domestic properties being undertaken in Scotland

• What Scotland can learn from other countries, including for example, Wales, in terms of their approaches to revaluation and reform

• Potential costs of any revaluation exercise in Scotland and how it should be funded

• Assuming that council tax remains one of the main local taxes in Scotland, what other reforms to the tax could be explored?

On 29 April 2025 the Committee wrote to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, setting out its conclusions and recommendations.

Read the letter to the Cabinet Secretary

The Commission on Local Tax Reform was an independent Commission created by the Scottish Government and co-chaired by the Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment and the President of COSLA. It brought together local and national politicians from different political parties and a range of expertise from across Scotland to look at ways of developing a fairer system of local taxation. It published its final report which you can view below:

Just Change: A New Approach to Local Taxation in December 2015.

The Committee also agreed to consider an approach to an inquiry involving wider consideration of local taxation at a later date.