Freezing or partially uprating income tax thresholds in Scotland correspondence: FOI release

Information requested

Please provide copies of any minutes, briefing notes, submissions, papers, presentations, or internal correspondence produced between 1 January 2025 and the date of this request in which Scottish Government officials identified, assessed, or warned Ministers about the impact of freezing or partially uprating income tax thresholds in Scotland.
This should include any documents which:

1. refer to fiscal drag, threshold effects, or the expansion of the higher rate income tax population;
2. quantify or estimate the number of additional taxpayers expected to become liable for the higher rate of income tax as a result of threshold freezes;
3. identify impacts on middle-income earners, including but not limited to teachers, nurses, police officers, or other public sector workers;
4. were prepared for, discussed at, or followed from meetings involving the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Scottish Fiscal Commission liaison meetings, or Scottish Government tax policy or budget governance groups.

Response

Regarding parts 1, 3 and 4 of your request, we try to provide information wherever we can. However, in this case the cost of finding and supplying the information would be more than the £600 limit.

This is because we would need to search all records in the Scottish Government’s electronic document and records system, as well as the inboxes of relevant colleagues. Searching the system requires using key words, which can return thousands of documents. Each of these would need to be reviewed to see whether it falls within the scope of your request.
Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could limit the range and types of information requested with a narrower focus, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted.

Regarding part 2 of your request, I have enclosed a spreadsheet which we hold that shows Baseline taxpayers per band. Taxpayers by band after policy changes announced at Budget 2026-27 are available from Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) supplementary table S4.4. To note that frozen thresholds up to and including 2026-27 are part of the SFC baseline as they were announced previously.

https://fiscalcommission.scot/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Jan-2026-SEFF-Publication-Chapter-4-Tax-Supplementary-figures.xlsx

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202600501058 - Information Released - Annex

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