Chamber and committees

The Forth Replacement Crossing (FRC) project provides a written update on progress to the Scottish Parliament Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee at three monthly intervals. These are supplemented by appearances in front of the committee by the FRC project director and project manager at usually six-monthly intervals and visits to the project site by members of the committee when requested.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission will provide independent scrutiny of Scottish Government forecasts of receipts from Land and Buildings Transaction Tax and Scottish Landfill Tax and assess the economic determinants that underpin forecasts of non-domestic rates income in Scotland. The commission will provide Parliament and the public with assurance over the reasonableness and integrity of the Scottish Government’s tax forecasts.

The Scottish Government will take all reasonable action to ensure that the tax revenue forecasts which underpin the Scottish Budget from 2015-16 onwards are assessed as robust and reasonable by the commission.

As set out on page 121 of Scotland’s Future, over the course of the first term of an independent Scottish Parliament, this government will work with Revenue Scotland to simplify the tax system to reduce compliance costs, streamline reliefs and help to reduce tax avoidance, with a target revenue gain of £250 million a year by the end of the first term.

The Office of Tax Simplification identified 1,140 separate reliefs in the UK tax system as at July 2014. This government would prioritise the ending of the married couple’s transferable tax allowance and the abolition of the shares for rights scheme following independence, and would identify further opportunities to reduce compliance costs, streamline reliefs and help to reduce tax avoidance as part of our planned review of the inherited tax system so that Scotland can realise the full benefits of a modern and efficient tax system.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-22265 on 13 August 2014. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-22265 on 13 August 2014. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The secretariat to the Financial Services Advisory Board, in discussion with Scottish Enterprise officials, made the decision to remove the item from the agenda for the Financial Services Advisory Board meeting on 28 April 2014 to enable a more comprehensive discussion to take place at a future meeting. The item was removed from the agenda on 14 April 2014.

I refer the member to the answer to S4W-22241 on 12 August 2014. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

E-commerce sales were estimated at £31 billion in 2010 through a methodology that adjusted UK level data on the basis of Scotland's share of UK employees in each of the sectors that contributed to the overall assessment of e-commerce sales.

a) The estimated figure for e-commerce sales in 2010 was not updated for 2011.

b) Using the same methodology used to generate the 2010 figure, the estimate of Scotland's total e-commerce sales in 2012 was £38 billion.

(c) The 2014 digital survey will be able to provide an estimated value for sales via the internet for surveyed companies for 2013-14. This will be included in the headline findings for the digital survey that are due to be published in September 2014.