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Publication - Statistics

Council Tax Reduction in Scotland: 2025-2026

Published
23 June 2026
Directorate
Local Government and Housing Directorate
Topic
Housing, Money and tax, Public sector

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.

Part of

Supporting documents

CTR Impact on Council Tax Income

In Scotland in 2025-26, the total gross Council Tax charged, before CTR, was £3.814 billion and the provisional income forgone due to CTR was £425.1 million. The increase in provisional income forgone due to CTR in 2025-26 compared to the final audited figure of £389.0 million in 2024-25 is likely driven by the increase in Council Tax rates from 2024-25 to 2025-26. This means that in total CTR accounted for 11.1 per cent of total gross Council Tax. This is notably lower than the one-fifth of chargeable dwellings in receipt of CTR quoted in Section 4 due to two main factors. Firstly, over an eighth of recipient households receive partial CTR as mentioned in Section 2.5. Secondly, as described in Section 4, the distribution of CTR recipients is heavily skewed towards the lower Council Tax bands with lower annual liability, and so lower CTR awards.

Information on the total value of all reductions under the CTR scheme is collected via two Scottish Government data collections:

  • Council Tax Receipts Return (CTRR) – Issued before local authorities’ accounts are audited and so collects provisional, unaudited values for the total reductions under CTR.
  • Local Financial Returns (LFR) - Issued after local authorities’ accounts are audited and so collects final, audited values for the total reductions under CTR.

The total value of reductions for each year between 2013-14 and 2025-26 by local authority is shown in the supplementary tables. The 2013-14 to 2024-25 figures have been the subject of audit. The latest 2025-26 figures are provisional.

These figures represent an increase of 18 per cent in the total value of reductions in Scotland between 2013-14 and 2025-26, compared to an increase of 8.5 per cent between 2013-14 and 2024-25 recorded last year. This is as a result of the increase in CTR scheme costs likely driven by increases in Council Tax rates.

One local authority has seen a decrease in the total value of reductions due to CTR between 2013-14 and 2025-26. This decrease was seen in Na h-Eileanan Siar (-10 per cent). Details of the changes in income forgone are available in the supplementary tables published with this report.

Contact

Email: lgfstats@gov.scot 

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