IT'S PRETTY clear that ScotGov is eyeing up Scotland's farmland as a cash cow by taking a more than idle look at how much it could be milked via a land tax.
There are a lot of 'buts' to this intention. The Scottish Land Commission under Hamish Trench is setting out an argument based around such a fund allowing the government to pursue its land reform objectives in a 'more progressive' way. But, whenever a political quango mentions the word 'progressive', it means big changes are on the way and that's where even the smallest of landowners should sit up and take notice.
It has to be asked if this land tax grab is mainly intended to fund ScotGov's attempt to steamroller further its ambition for blanket tree planting, a plan which is already chasing sheep, cattle and farmers from many of the traditional hill farming areas of Scotland. That's exactly what can be gleaned from the phrase in the PR bumph about 'moving to a more diverse and productive pattern of land ownership.'
It's a grand master plan which also has ScotGov's climate change carbon capture targets at its heart, but we have to ask whether the selective use of scientific data is misrepresenting the ability of a successful farming industry to capture carbon just as much as it is being shown that livestock, supposedly, are leading to some sort of weather-induced Armageddon by burping their way to a methane time-bomb.
But, as has been shown, this is not an exact science and many of the dire predictions of some early climate change modelling has been shown up to be so wide of the mark that the statisticians could get a game as a striker for Albion Rovers (currently bottom of Scottish League 2 and -22 on goal difference).
Community land buyouts are another area where such monies could be put to use, but there remain huge question marks over whether the millions already spent on this have been an investment worth making.
The industry at large must make it clear that the only way these taxes can be paid to government is if the industry is profitable and can afford to pay the piper who's calling this particular tune. And that means that any future support mechanisms could be pumping money into the industry at one end, while the proposed land tax takes it away at the other – a round robin for the Scottish Treasury, with no nett benefit for anyone?
It's also a bit fatuous and simplistic to say that gains from rising land value should benefit society as a whole. Those values are only accrued when land is sold and until such time as it is, then it is a mere figure on a balance sheet. The Treasury already extracts its pound of flesh from land with death duties and capital gains taxes, so does it intend to stop those if any new land tax is providing a steady annual income? We should be told.
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