Scottish sporting rates - new tax for Scotland

From 1 October 2017, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon will mount a new attack on Scottish sporting estates. Her years of forcibly buying their land, shooting their deer, poisoning their salmon, and briefing against them and the people they employ to manage Scotland’s landscape have failed. She has not ‘driven the foreigners out of Scotland’, nor has she replanted the Scottish Highlands with the Caledonian pine forest last seen 8,000 years ago. As her popularity wanes, her last resort is to tax landowners out of existence, by sending out bills for a new sporting rates tax.

If you get a valuation notice for sporting rates, appeal. The best advice we have is that this is not a class action – appeals have to be made individually and will take up to three years to go through up to three different courts, ending at the Court of Session, Scotland's supreme civil court. It’s going to be a boomtime for Nicola’s friends among Scotland’s lawyers, accountants and surveyors, but it is the only recourse against this tax.

Depending on your land use, it is currently estimated you will have to pay between 38p and £1 per acre (£1-£2.46 per hectare) per year.

This bill is payable whether or not you shoot over the land. It is based on how much you would make if you were leasing the shooting/stalking commercially.

For a full article about the rates, go to http://www.fieldsportschannel.tv/scottish-sporting-rates-new-tax-for-scotland/

To go stalking at Alvie Estate, email Lachie Smith ls@highlandsporting.com

Sign up for our weekly email newsletter http://www.fieldsportschannel.tv/register

This item appears on YouTube in Fieldsports Britain, episode 409 http://bit.ly/fieldsportsbritain409

Sign up for our weekly email newsletter http://www.fieldsportschannel.tv/register