Will the next Parliament try and reform council tax?

Will Holyrood’s seventh session see council tax reformed? Don't hold your breath.

While Scottish Labour’s manifesto says that “progressive reforms are required”, it adds that “any transition will need buy-in from across the Parliament”.

Reform UK only commit to cancelling the two additional council bands announced by Shona Robison in the Scottish Budget.

And while the Tories want to cut tax generally, there's no specific mention of council tax.

Which is why the Scottish Greens deserve some credit for coming forward with actual proposals.

In their hefty 165-page prospectus, the party says they want to “transform the way we fund local services by finally scrapping the Council Tax and replacing it with a fairer, more effective system that fully reflects the wealth tied up in our housing market”.

Ultimately, they want it replaced with what they are calling a new Residential Property Tax, which would be based on up-to-date property values, rather than the 1991 valuations that currently determine how much we hand over to town halls .

According to the IFS, which has been given some extra insight into the manifesto, while ministers would be in charge of the design, it would be up to councils to decide what rate to levy on properties.

These rates would depend on how much councils thought they needed to spend and the amount of Scottish Government funding they received to help pay for those services.

But it is a gradual process. The first step would be an immediate revaluation, followed by new legislation which would mandate revaluations at least every five years.

Speaking to journalists at the manifesto launch, Ross Greer said his MSPs would “work relentlessly to make sure that parliament actually delivers on that long overdue reform”.

He added: “We tabled the first vote in parliament last year to at least do revaluation, so council tax was based on up-to-date property values. The only other party that supported the Greens on that was the Lib Dems.

“So I think the parties who have failed to take forward council tax reform should take responsibility for that."

In its analysis of the manifesto, the IFS says it had been told the Greens are assuming councils would set a tax rate of 1% of property value.

This compares to an average under the existing council tax system of around 0.7% of property value as of 2025–26.

So that means the average tax bill would rise under the Scottish Greens’ proposal.

But not all properties would see a tax rise.

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Council tax currently hits lower-value homes harder relative to their worth, so switching to a flat 1% property tax would reduce bills for many cheaper properties, mostly those in bands A–C.

But it would increase costs for more expensive homes — for example, a typical Band D property worth about £211,000 would see its bill rise from around £1,653 to £2,110, while a higher-value Band F home worth about £392,000 would go from roughly £2,686 to £3,920, says the think tank.

The IFS says that, overall, the plans could raise an extra £1.3 billion to £1.5 billion a year.

“Different people will have different views as to whether the tax rise and associated increase in spending is good or not — and these plans would cement Scotland’s position as the part of the UK with the highest tax rates.

“But from a tax design perspective, a revalued, reformed property tax would be a substantial improvement on the current out-of-date council tax.

“And given the more limited scope for evasion, avoidance and other behavioural responses to annual property taxes than to income tax, for example, if the next Scottish Government did want to raise revenue and further increase the progressivity of the tax system, the plans for council tax set out by the Scottish Greens would be a good place to start.”

We still have the Lib Dem and SNP manifestos to come this week, but it's worth remembering in the last election there was, on paper, a broad reformist mood. Indeed the SNP have been promising to scrap council tax since 2007.

You will have noted, however, that we made it all the way through the sixth session of the Scottish Parliament without any reform.

In February last year, the Scottish Government set out plans to make council tax “fairer” but in October, Finance Secretary Shona Robison admitted that it “will not be complete in this decade”.

Given Holyrood’s record, that may have been optimistic