l What tax changes are being made as a result of the new Scotland Act?
The Scottish Government will become responsible for raising about half the income tax generated in Scotland from 2016 as its grant from Westminster is cut. The move is designed to make MSPs more accountable for the cash they spend. Stamp duty and landfill tax will be abolished in Scotland in 2015 and Holyrood will devise alternatives.
l Why is HMRC collecting Scottish income tax?
The Scottish rate of income tax will remain part of the UK tax system, so the UK taxman is responsible for collecting it. A "Scottish taxman", Revenue Scotland, is being set up to collect the new versions of the fully devolved stamp duty and landfill tax.
l Why are MSPs concerned?
HMRC is accountable to Westminster. But any errors it makes on SRIT would impact on Scotland's budget – and could even benefit the rest of the UK at Scotland's expense. So MSPs want to ensure they can haul HMRC officials before Holyrood's audit committee to explain themselves if things go wrong.
l What could go wrong?
Major public sector IT projects have an unhappy history.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article