It’s time to start taxing Scottish land

A new poll reveals that more than two thirds of people in Scotland would support a Scottish land tax that would help support local public services and aid in reforming Scotland’s patterns of concentrated land ownership.

The poll was part of the Big Land Question commissioned by the Revive Coalition (of which Common Weal is a member) and found that 67% of people would support a tax on land ownership and more that 85% of people would also support taxes on unsustainable activities such as highly carbon emitting land uses as well as similar numbers in favour of increased land transaction taxes for people who already own large amounts of land when they try to buy more.

Land is one of Scotland’s largest stores of relatively untaxed wealth and this has contributed to Scotland experiencing one of the most concentrated patterns of private land ownership anywhere in the world with just 421 people or companies owning half of Scotland.

In 2024, Common Weal published our proposal for a Scottish Land Tax which would raise around £450 million per year directly for Local Authorities and represents the first land tax proposal for Scotland that was able to estimate the revenue potential for each of Scotland’s 32 Councils. This would be sufficient to close the budget gaps that many are facing and would prevent the closure of vital public services such as libraries and leisure centres. Our tax was built on the solid international examples set by countries such as Denmark, Estonia and Australia where such land taxes have been established for many years.

Crucially, our proposal would be built not as a separate “land tax” as many previous proposals have been but would be a natural extension of our proposed replacement to the Council Tax. Combining the two would prevent rich landowners from lobbying for a reduction to their land tax to be paid for by a hike on the taxes on your house.

As with the Property Tax on housing, which would allow for discounts for those who need one and surcharges on multiple house ownership or those who leave their houses vacant, the tax on land would allow for Local Authorities to apply discounts or exemptions to public or community owned land or to crofters and smallholders while applying surcharges to large landowners, absentee landlords or land not owned by a “natural person” to prevent corporations and trust funds from owning land in perpetuity without even having to pay inheritance tax when the owners of the corporations die.

The most powerful point to make in all of this is that all of these tax changes are already entirely within the power of the Scottish Government. While Holyrood is limited when it comes to creating new national-scale taxes, the Scottish Parliament has almost unlimited power to create new taxes that are controlled locally and which fund local public services. They have already demonstrated this power with smaller taxes like the Visitor Levy or “Tourist Tax”.

There is therefore no excuse. Countries like Denmark have proven that land taxes are effective. The powers already lie with MSPs. And this new poll shows that the policy is much more popular than the poll ratings of any single party in Parliament which guarantees that cross-party support is possible.

The only barrier therefore is who the MSPs think is more important. The 67% of Scottish people who want a land tax. Or the 421 people who own half of Scotland.