21st September 2026
Council tax is one of those bills that most households know only too well.
It arrives every month or in a series of instalments, and it helps pay for services ranging from rubbish collection and roads to schools, social care and other council services.
So the Scottish Government's latest report on the future of council tax makes interesting reading, not just because of what people said about reform, but because of how many people actually took part in the discussion.
The consultation received 1,311 responses. After duplicate, blank and unsuitable responses were removed, there were 1,291 valid responses.
That is not nothing, but it is a surprisingly small number when discussing a tax that affects households across the whole of Scotland.
There were also five specially organised public engagement events, held in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Inverness, Edinburgh and online.
Together they attracted just 115 participants.
The biggest meeting was Glasgow, with 25 people. Edinburgh had 24, Aberdeen 23, the online session 23 and Inverness just 20.
In other words, the entire five-event programme involved roughly the number of people who might attend a reasonably well-supported local public meeting.
It was not simply an open public meeting
There is an important qualification.
The events were deliberately designed as structured engagement rather than mass public meetings. Recruitment was carried out using social media, newsletters, libraries, local authorities and community organisations.
A total of 443 people expressed an interest in taking part. From those, participants were selected to provide a mixture of geography, council-tax bands, housing tenure, gender, age, income and whether they received council tax reductions or exemptions.
The organisers originally invited 227 people, expecting around 30 people at each event.
But attendance was considerably lower than expected.
The report says some people could not attend because of illness, work shifts or family circumstances. Others simply did not turn up and could not be contacted, so the reasons for the non-attendance were unknown.
That means the 115 people were not simply the 115 people who happened to walk through the door. There was an attempt to produce a diverse group.
Nevertheless, only about half of those invited actually attended.
And what did they say?
The findings are quite clear.
Across the consultation, 82% of respondents who answered the question supported reforming the current council tax system.
There was also majority support for updating property values. 67% supported revaluation, compared with those who wanted to leave the existing valuations unchanged.
The engagement events were even more consistent. All 20 discussion groups across the five events chose revaluation rather than keeping the present property valuations.
But that does not necessarily mean that Scots as a whole have voted for council tax revaluation.
It means that the people who responded to the consultation, and the people who took part in the structured engagement programme, expressed those views.
That is an important distinction.
The 1991 problem
The underlying issue is that Scottish council tax still uses property valuations based on 1991 values.
The Scottish Government consultation was intended to examine whether the system should be updated and what a future system might look like.
Among the options discussed was a revalued 14-band system, which emerged as the most favoured of the reform options considered.
There was also considerable interest in alternatives to a property-based tax. Respondents suggested ideas including local income tax, land value taxation, a proportional property tax and systems based partly on household occupancy or use of local services.
This illustrates why the issue is much more complicated than simply updating house values.
Someone may own a valuable house but have a relatively modest income. Someone else may live in a lower-value property but have a much higher household income.
That is one of the central arguments running through the consultation responses.
]The pensioner problem
This is particularly relevant to older homeowners.
Many people have lived in the same house for decades. They may have bought an ordinary family home when prices were much lower and now find that its market value has risen substantially.
A revaluation could therefore produce a higher council tax bill even though the owner's income has not increased by anything like the same amount.
The consultation report records concerns about precisely this problem, along with calls for stronger protection for pensioners, disabled people and households on low incomes.
There was support for transitional arrangements to prevent people being hit by sudden increases.
There was also majority support for expanding Council Tax Reduction, although there was less agreement about allowing people to defer their bills.
What about the people who did not take part?
This may ultimately be the most interesting question.
The report provides a detailed picture of what the respondents thought. It does not tell us what the millions of Scots who did not respond think.
That is not a criticism of the independent researchers. Consultation exercises are designed to gather views from people who choose to participate, and the engagement events were deliberately constructed to include a range of different households.
But council tax reform is potentially a very significant change.
It could affect household finances, property values, local government funding and the relationship between taxpayers and councils.
The relatively low level of participation therefore deserves some attention.
It is particularly noticeable that the five public meetings attracted only 115 people despite the subject being something that affects households across the country.
Perhaps the problem is partly the language of government consultations. A document about "the future of council tax" is unlikely to make many people feel that something immediately important is happening to their household budget.
People tend to become interested when the question changes from "What should Scotland's future council tax system look like?" to "Could my council tax bill go up?"
The real debate has yet to begin
The consultation is an important stage in the process, but it is not the final decision.
The Scottish Government and COSLA have been working through a Joint Working Group on Council Tax Reform, with the aim of building agreement on a future system.
The consultation findings will now feed into that process and eventually into decisions about how council tax should operate.
And that is when public interest may become much greater.
A general question about reform can produce relatively little engagement.
A specific proposal saying that a particular band of property might pay £X more or £Y less is likely to attract rather more attention.
For homeowners, tenants, pensioners and councils across Scotland, that is the stage worth watching.
The latest report tells us what the people who took part think.
It does not yet tell us what Scotland thinks.
And with only 1,291 valid consultation responses and 115 people attending the five public engagement events, there is still a very large part of the country that has not said anything at all.
Future of council tax in Scotland: consultation analysis - final report