Scottish Fiscal Commission must ensure adequate safeguarding of sensitive personal data, say tax professionals

The body representing Scotland’s tax professionals has reiterated its support for plans to place the Scottish Fiscal Commission on a statutory footing from next year, but restated the importance of ensuring that the privacy of data relating to individual members of the public is maintained.

The Chartered Institute of Taxation was responding to the Scottish Government’s call for evidence on the Draft Scottish Fiscal Commission (Modification of Functions) Regulations 2017.

In its response, the Institute calls for appropriate safeguards to be put in place to ensure that individual taxpayers’ information is protected.

The CIOT has also called on the Scottish Government to ensure that the Commission is properly resourced to be able to execute its enhanced functions when it becomes a statutory body from 1 April next year.

Commenting on the submission, Moira Kelly, Chair of the CIOT’s Scottish Technical Committee said: “Independent scrutiny is an essential component of a robust fiscal framework which can in turn help to create a better, more efficient tax system. The move to place the Scottish Fiscal Commission on a statutory footing from April of next year is a welcome step forward in achieving these aims.

“Effective and appropriate public scrutiny must be combined with protecting sensitive and personal information related to individual taxpayers. We are encouraged that the Scottish Government believes that there will be no impact on privacy as a result of the use of anonymised, aggregate data.

“However, as we have warned in the past, there is a need – particularly in areas of relatively low population such as the Highlands and Islands – to make sure that even anonymous and aggregated data cannot allow for fairly easy identification of those affected.

“We trust that the appropriate steps will be taken to maintain the anonymity of this data, with Part 3 of the Revenue Scotland and Tax Powers Act 2014 a useful example of how this can be achieved, but we will nevertheless be maintaining a close eye on developments.”