Overview
7.The Act comprises 44 sections and is divided into five parts as follows:
PART 1 establishes that the tax is to be called the Scottish Landfill Tax to avoid potential confusion with references to UK Landfill Tax and gives an overview of the tax.
PART 2 contains the key concepts underlying the tax, including defining what a taxable disposal is, what disposals are exempt from the tax, how to calculate tax, who is liable to pay tax and when credit is available in relation to tax.
PART 3 contains the administrative provisions of the Act, including the registration requirements, accounting periods, recovery of overpaid tax, information provision and requirements for record keeping.
PART 4 defines the Tax Authority and establishes how functions may be delegated to SEPA and how directions may be made. It also outlines the rights of appeal.
PART 5 of the Act sets out the procedure for a series of subordinate legislation to be made under this Act. This includes:
setting the rates of the tax,
ability to change the materials taxed (setting qualifying material types),
ability to create new material types (due to new technologies or wanting to subdivide existing materials),
ability to add or remove exempted material types,
ability to change how the tax due is calculated,
methodologies for determining weight of material at a site,
ability to change credit/rebate qualifications (e.g the removal of material from a site that has already been taxed gets credited to the landfill site operator etc),
procedures for overpaid tax,
procedures for administering bad debt including bad debt relief (if a landfill operator’s customer becomes insolvent or bankrupt),
procedures for writing off bad debts,
what information must be on Scottish Landfill Tax invoices.
8.Scottish Landfill Tax is a tax on taxable disposals. A “taxable disposal” is waste material which has been disposed of by way of landfill.
