More clarity on country sporting rates welcomed, says Saffery Champness

How the new system of business rates for shooting rights and deer forests in Scotland will work has been given some clarification this week with more information published on the Scottish Assessors Association website.

The information indicates that sporting rates will be levied on an area basis with different rates for different types of ground regardless of whether any sporting or shooting activity actually takes place.

The published rates per hectare are as follows:

Arable land: £4.00

Unimproved grassland: £4.00

Improved grassland: £3.50

Deer forest, hill and moor: £2.00

Woodland/forestry: £5.00

Mixed: £5.00

Susie Swift, Partner at Saffery Champness, and a member of its Landed Estates and Rural Business Group based in the firm’s Inverness office, said: “The reintroduction of sporting rates to Scotland comes after a 20 year break. We understand that some 55,000 properties will have been assessed either based on information provided by the landholding or in the absence of that, an estimate has been made by the Assessors.

“Many businesses will gain exemption under the small business bonus scheme for which the threshold is £15,000, although sporting rates will be pooled with other business rate liabilities and this accumulated figure may take some businesses outside that exempt status.

“Being area based, sporting rates should not act as a disincentive for either sport or management. As they will be levied over all rural land whether there is any sporting activity or not then the opposite may in fact be the case. However this new tax liability, together with the high increases in rates on the renewables sector, may have adverse consequences in terms of the total rural tax take.

“The Scottish Government also introduced different bands for the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Scotland’s Stamp Duty Land Tax) to extract more from high value and second homes purchases, but the net proceeds have fallen below forecast due to the slow down in activity in the high value sector of the housing market. The administration costs of sporting rates may just bring about a similar result.”