The Scottish Government's plan for a local income tax has hit another hurdle after Edinburgh University law professor Chris Himsworth told MSPs it could be in breach of the European Charter of Local Self-government, a treaty ratified by Westminster.
In his submission to Holyrood's local government committee, Prof Himsworth notes articles 7 and 9 enshrined the right of councils to vary their own levies, and that this would be removed in the Scottish Government's proposal for a fixed income tax charge.

’It seems to me that a proposal to remove from Scottish local authorities any power at all to determine the level of their own financial resources through local taxation is almost certainly in breach of Article 9,’ he said.

David McLetchie, the Scottish Tories' local government spokesman and a member of the committee, said he would be very surprised if the Scottish Government had looked into the potential effect of this charter ‘given how flaky their background work seems to have been for this proposal’.

Further reading:

SNP’s local tax saved by the Greens

Setback for Scotland’s local income tax

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