Scottish Budget 2025/26 unveiled: more clarification is needed

Against a backdrop where the UK Budget provided an additional £1.5 billion for the current financial year and £3.4 billion in 2025/26, Holyrood finance secretary, Shona Robison, announced a series of tax and business measures in the 2025/26 Scottish Budget.

The overarching view of our tax specialists is that much more clarification is needed between what was new funding, and what had previously been announced.

Whilst headlines may focus on the end to the two-child benefits cap and an extension of hospitality business rates relief, it is perhaps what hasn’t been said that will make those in the business world reticent to declare any major opinions.

The main aspects of the budget were:

• The non-domestic rates basic property rate for properties with a rateable value of £51,000 or less will be frozen at 49.8p.

This is good news for qualifying properties but not as good for those that were hoping for greater non domestic rates support.

• The Small Business Bonus Scheme will be retained with the hospitality sector receiving 40% non-domestic rates relief if they fall within the basic property rate. Hospitality businesses in the Scottish islands will get 100% relief up to £110,000 per business. Retail and leisure businesses will however not benefit from this announcement.

This will be hugely disappointing to these businesses especially when the UK Government has given 75% relief in the last two years and the relief will be 40% for 2025/26.

• £200 million extra funding for the Scottish National Investment Bank.

At times, the budget felt like a case of being blinded by figures with the finance secretary flitting back and forth between savings and absolutes.

While talking about agriculture and the previous years’ funding that had been retained, it was not clarified whether this year’s funding would be ring-fenced, something that was suggested recently by Chancellor Rachel Reeves would not be the case.

In theory, the Scottish Government don’t have to spend it on the farming community, something which may come out in the detail, but hopefully the Scottish Government will continue to support Scottish farming to the fullest extent possible.

Elsewhere, there will be no new tax bands or increases in the rates of Scottish income tax for the remainder of this government. The thresholds at which basic rate and intermediate rate tax starter bands apply will increase. However, due to the freezing of the higher and advance rates fiscal drag could result in some taxpayers paying more tax in 2025/26.

From a personal tax point of view, the low-level tax band expansion allows the Scottish Government to continue saying that the majority of taxpayers in Scotland pay less tax than in England albeit by a small amount, while the rest pay substantially more than our English counterparts.

Green energy was another significant aspect of Robison’s Budget in which she announced a ‘re-industrialisation’ of Scotland with capital spending totalling over £7bn. She detailed a tripling of Scottish Government investment in offshore wind to £150 million, underlining the commitment of £500million over five years.

Aberdeen was hailed by Robison as ‘perfectly placed to become a global hub for green energy’. What that means, we don’t yet fully know. There was no mention of extra money being directly spent on the North-east and the area is already regarded as a hub with the oil and servicing industry being here. The £150m increase to offshore wind investment is welcome news and will undoubtedly help this sector.

As with most government Budgets, the devil will be in the detail, with more to emerge as the announcements are fleshed out by those in business and within opposition parties over the coming days.