A surcharge on empty properties will not be included in proposed legislation in a shake-up of business rates, the Scottish Government has announced.
Introducing a 10% surcharge on empty properties after five years was one of 30 recommendations made by former RBS Scotland chairman Ken Barclay in his review of business rates.
The Barclay Implementation Advisory Group's final report published on Friday disagreed with his belief this would encourage properties back into productive use and instead said it would "simply further penalise ratepayers holding on to currently unproductive properties".
The also said the Scottish Government should publish a national list of rates relief recipients to improve transparency, increase awareness of relief availability and help to tackle fraudulent claims.
The group agreed that a new civil penalty should be made available to councils to act as a deterrent to withholding information.
The government said the empty property surcharge will not be taken forward into the proposed Non-Domestic Rates (Scotland) Bill due to be introduced at Holyrood before Easter.
The Bill will propose making provision for three-yearly valuations after the 2022 revaluations, maintain the Business Growth accelerator to encourage businesses to expand and reform the appeals system to reduce speculative appeals.
Other planned changes in the legislation include closing down tax avoidance tactics and ending rates relief for mainstream independent schools.
A planned pilot scheme for some councils to increase rates on out of town and online businesses was earlier dropped by Finance Secretary Derek Mackay.
The government also published an analysis of responses on Friday to a consultation on Barclay review recommendations requiring legislation, which ran for around three months, closing in September 2018.
The report said: "A recurring theme in the consultation responses was that proposed changes to non-domestic rates policy, and consequent legislation, needed to be clearer."
The advisory group strongly supported the recommendation for provision of better information on rates for ratepayers.
Information currently provided by local authorities was said to be "inconsistent in content and quality" and the group said the Scottish Government should improve the information on its website.
Public Finance Minister Kate Forbes said: "We are making good progress in reforming the business rates system to help us maintain a competitive advantage for Scottish ratepayers and support the Scottish economy.
"I welcome the engagement of all stakeholders in the process so far and hope this will continue as the bill makes its way through Parliament.
"The bill provisions are designed to stimulate the economy, reduce red tape, improve transparency and reduce tax avoidance.
"These provisions, alongside others in the budget, strike the right balance between offering a competitive and sustainable taxation environment while delivering sufficient resources to fund vital public services."
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 here