In this report for the Scottish Government, Eunomia presents an analysis of the potential options for varying the landfill tax in Scotland.

The stimulus of this study comes from the following recommendation by the Calman Commission:

“Stamp Duty Land Tax, Aggregates Levy, Landfill Tax and Air Passenger Duty should
be devolved to the Scottish Parliament, again with a corresponding reduction in the
block grant.”

The Coalition Government of 2010 committed to devolving a number of powers, including jurisdiction over the landfill tax. Variation of the tax is expected to be available to Scotland once the relevant powers have been devolved in 2014/15. At present, no decision has been made regarding changes to the level or structure of the tax.

This report considers options for varying the landfill tax with respect to the rest of the UK. It evaluated what impact this would have on waste policy and Scotland’s goal of achieving a Zero Waste Society. The definition of a Zero Waste Society is summarised as:

“everything we use and throw away is a resource which has a value, a value that we
should try to preserve, capture, and use again wherever possible. That is what a zero waste Scotland means – not a country where we never throw anything away, but a new approach to making the most effective use of all resources, and avoiding wasting resources or making them unusable wherever we can.”
Richard Lochhead, MSP – Cabinet Secretary

As far as the authors are aware, part of the approach used in this study, to model the impacts of changes in a landfill tax, has not been used before, neither in the UK, nor anywhere else in the world.

This report is available free of charge. Please provide a few details about yourself and one of the team will email you the full report shortly.