Council Tax Reduction in Scotland: 2025-2026
Council Tax Reduction (CTR) awarded by age, household structure, income sources and employment status, deprivation index, and Council Tax band in the financial year from April 2025 to March 2026. It makes references to the previously published March 2025 for comparative purposes.
Introduction
The CTR scheme provides lower income households in Scotland with a reduction in their Council Tax liability. The reduction can be any proportion of the liability, up to and including 100 per cent (i.e. the household has their Council Tax liability reduced to zero and pays no Council Tax).
CTR data is reported from CTR extracts provided by local authorities on a monthly basis. This publication provides the data on the number of CTR recipients, and the weekly income forgone from April 2025 to March 2026. It also makes references to the previously published March 2025 statistics. The publication also includes detailed analysis of additional characteristics and weekly awards for March 2026 CTR data and therefore supplements the monthly release for the data period up to March 2026 published on 12th May 2026.
Since its introduction, entitlement to CTR in Scotland has broadly replicated, as far as possible, previous entitlement to Council Tax Benefit (the previous UK-wide benefit abolished in 2013).
The 2017-18 and 2018-19 Local Government Finance settlements included agreement between the Scottish Government and local government for locally determined Council Tax increases to be capped at 3 per cent in cash terms. In 2019-20 and 2020-21 they were capped at 3 per cent in real terms, which was 4.79 per cent (in 2019-20) and 4.84 per cent (in 2020-21) in cash terms. In 2021-22, Council Tax rates were frozen. In 2022-23, the majority of local authorities increased their CT rates by around three percent. Shetland froze their rate at 2021-22 levels. In 2023-24, local authorities increased their CT rates by between four and ten percent. In 2024-25, Council Tax rates were frozen and in 2025-26 there were no restrictions on what Council Tax rates councils were able to set.
How CTR awards are calculated
Entitlement to CTR and the amount awarded is based on the characteristics and income of the applicant and their household. Figure 3 demonstrates a CTR calculation. Please note that this is a simplified version and does not include some additional features of the scheme (such as capital rules, non-dependant deductions and the second adult rebate).
Figure 3: Process for calculating CTR awards
Contact
Email: lgfstats@gov.scot