Scottish Income Tax operation by HMRC: service level agreement

Annex C: Scottish Income Tax Confidentiality Agreement

To ensure the timely and effective delivery of changes to SIT rates and thresholds, the Scottish Government may need to share Budget sensitive information with HMRC which provides details for SIT policy development.

HMRC will respect the convention that Scottish Government ministers are able to seek advice from HMRC on the delivery of policy options within the scope of SIT in confidence, between the Scottish Government and HMRC only.

HMRC will limit access to sensitive information shared by the Scottish Government on policy options to individuals who have a clear business need to access it, to ensure the operational delivery of any required changes. A list of these individuals will be kept updated and agreed with the Scottish Government prior to any information being shared.

In dealing with sensitive information shared by the Scottish Government, HMRC officials will adhere to the standards of behaviour set out in the Civil Service Code.

HMRC will require all individuals with access to sensitive information that is shared by the Scottish Government to have completed the relevant budget security training within the previous 12 months. This training provides guidance for officials on how to treat sensitive budget information and ensure it remains confidential.

If HMRC establishes a project to deliver any required SIT changes, HMRC will take measures to ensure the policy changes the project delivers remain confidential between HMRC and the Scottish Government only. These will include, but are not limited to, assigning a codename to the project.

HMRC may need to disclose sensitive information shared by the Scottish Government to trusted external IT stakeholders to support the delivery of SIT changes. HMRC will agree this with the Scottish Government prior to sharing the information.

HMRC will ensure these external IT stakeholders work under non-disclosure agreements to protect the confidentiality of sensitive information shared by the Scottish Government.

This Confidentiality Agreement does not preclude HMRC from sharing non-sensitive information about projects to deliver SIT changes beyond the key individuals agreed with the Scottish Government. This may be necessary when the changes impact on wider HMRC priorities.

If any disputes arise regarding confidentiality, these will be dealt with using the disputes resolution policy set out at in this Agreement.

1. These measures relate solely to enquiries on Scottish taxpayer status. Numbers of SIT specific enquiries (such as those regarding taxpayer status) are likely to be significantly lower than general income tax enquiries (such as those issues that potentially affect Scottish and rUK taxpayers equally), and therefore the potential for higher volatility in the Scottish specific figures is higher than for whole of UK Income Tax enquiries. HMRC’s quarterly UK performance reports include any contact made by Scottish taxpayers on any other issues including any contact made via i-forms. These are published on GOV.UK. ↩

2. For the purpose of this document ‘Scottish Income Tax’ includes the Scottish rate of Income Tax power devolved to the Scottish Parliament in the Scotland Act 2012 which operated in the tax year 2016 to 2017, and the further SIT powers devolved in the Scotland Act 2016 which have been in operation from 2017 to 2018. You can read the Fiscal Framework Agreement. ↩

3. For more information see Managing Public Money. ↩