Scotland will be tough on tax avoidance – and way ahead of Westminster

Posted on

The Scottish parliament has published a report on its devolved taxing powers and how to tackle abuse.

It looks like the parliament has adopted a tough, realistic and appropriate approach to this issue, although, as ever the detail will be important. What's particularly welcome is its approach to a general anti-avoidance rule.

First it has adopted Westminster's half hearted and wholly ineffective General Anti-Abuse Rule approach.

Second, it's rejected any idea of a panel of tax industry experts having control of this process, as adopted in the UK General Anti-Abuse Rule, and third it is saying that the general anti-avoidance rule must be wide reaching, recommending:

introducing a rule to give the GAAR priority over any other legislative measures and international double tax arrangements.

That last is the key point. The UK General Anti-Abuse Rule backed off from this. Scotland is not going to do so. They're right. Westminster very definitely got it wrong.


Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:

You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.

And if you would like to support this blog you can, here: