About Scottish Landfill Tax statistics

Background to Scottish Landfill Tax

Scottish Landfill Tax (SLfT) is a tax on the disposal or unauthorised disposal of waste to landfill and is charged by weight. A disposal is taxable if it is a disposal of material as waste, is made by way of landfill and is made at a landfill site.

SLfT also applies to the prescribed landfill activities. These relate to the use of material on site, such as the use of material to create or maintain a temporary haul road. All prescribed landfill activities are listed in the Scottish Landfill Tax (Prescribed Landfill Site Activities) Order 2014. 

SLfT is a devolved tax, replacing UK landfill tax in Scotland only from 1 April 2015. Scottish Government makes decisions about and sets SLfT rates. Our website sets out current rates and past rates. The tax is administered by Revenue Scotland with support from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).

SLfT is paid by landfill site operators. All landfill operators must register with Revenue Scotland and provide a return, unless exempted by the Landfill Tax (Scotland) Act 2014. Revenue Scotland register operators on the Scottish Landfill Tax Register. Each operator may operate one or more landfill sites. Each operator submits one tax return per quarter, which includes details about all the sites run by that operator. The SLfT return includes a range of information about the tax liabilities and credits claimed, along with supplementary information on the type and amount of waste disposed of in the quarter. A SLfT return must be submitted and arrangements made for payment of the SLfT due to Revenue Scotland by 44 days after the end of the quarter.  Amendments and corrections can be made to SLfT returns up to one year following the filing date. After 12 months, changes to SLfT tax amounts due can occur as a result of Revenue Scotland compliance activities. The vast majority of SLfT returns are submitted online via the Revenue Scotland portal. Operators must submit returns where no tax is declared due when a site is unused but still registered.

The Scottish Landfill Communities Fund is a tax credit scheme, linked to Scottish Landfill Tax. It encourages landfill site operators to contribute tax credits to community and environmental projects. Operators submit details of their total contributions and the corresponding amount of tax credit they are claiming as part of their tax return each quarter.

Further information about Scottish Landfill Tax and the Scottish Landfill Communities Fund on the Revenue Scotland website.

What this publication covers

This publication series provides data on the tax declared payable, waste tonnages and the Scottish Landfill Communities Fund based on tax returns provided to Revenue Scotland.

Users should note that this publication is not a commentary on the volume of waste from all sources or volume of waste landfilled in Scotland. Exempt operators will not be covered by this publication. Illegal landfill operators will be required to pay SLfT and, consequently, will be covered by this publication.

These statistics are reported in relation to the quarter in which the landfill disposal took place. For example, if a landfill operator submits an SLfT tax return in August 2023 relating to the quarter April - June 2023, the tax declared due is reported against that quarter (i.e. April - June 2023).

The tax received is not included in this publication, but is monitored closely by Revenue Scotland and information on revenues collected and paid over to the Scottish Consolidated fund is included in Revenue Scotland's Annual Report and Financial Statements Annual Report and Financial Statements.

Data source

Data is drawn from Revenue Scotland's tax administration system, which holds a record of each version of a tax return submitted. The tax return includes information on:

• tax declared payable
• total standard and lower rate tonnages per site
• tonnages by European Waste Catalogue code per site.

An all-time snapshot of each table is taken around two months after the end of each quarter. This allows time for the submission of the latest quarter’s tax returns by 44 days after the end of the quarter and subsequent checking by the tax compliance team. The most recently submitted return from each operator for each quarter is selected from the tax returns and is then combined to produce Scotland level data for each quarter. Each snapshot of the administration system can contain retrospective changes to tax return details such as tonnages and tax declared due.

Methodology

Quarterly Scottish Landfill Tax (SLfT) table

‘Returns received’ is the number of tax returns received relating to each quarter. Only the latest version of each return from each operator is counted. A return can cover multiple sites. Returns should be received from all operators that are registered during each quarter. The number of returns received can include nil returns i.e. where an operator is registered but has submitted a return with no tax declared due and no disposals recorded.

‘Total sites’ is the total number of sites covered by the tax returns received relating to each quarter. This should include all registered sites and may include sites where no tax was declared due and no disposals were recorded.

‘Total tax declared payable’, and the standard and lower rate tonnage are as declared on the tax return. 

SLCF payments in this table is the sum of contributions to the SCLF from the tax return.

Annual Scottish Landfill Tax statistics table

‘Gross SLfT declared due’ is derived from the tonnages declared due on the tax return multiplied by the relevant tax rate.

‘Contributions to SCLF’ and ‘credit claimed for contributions to SLCF’ are as declared on the tax return. You can find further information about these contributions and credit on the Scottish Landfill Communities Fund section of our website.

‘Credit claimed for bad debt and permanent removals’ is as declared on the tax return. You can find further information about these claims for credit on our website. 

‘All credit claimed’ is the sum of ‘Contributions to SCLF’, ‘credit claimed for contributions to SLCF’ and ‘credit claimed for bad debt and permanent removals’.

‘Net SLfT declared due’ is the SLfT declared payable from the tax return.

European waste catalogue (EWC) code tables

Tonnages by EWC code is derived in two steps because of a known discrepancy between the data for total waste tonnages per site compared to the data for total waste tonnages at EWC code level per site. Firstly, the tonnages held at EWC code level are aggregated up by year and the proportion of waste from each EWC code per year is calculated. These proportions are then applied to the total tonnages per year from the site level data. This ensures consistency in total tonnages being used in different publication tables.

Gross SLfT is calculated by multiplying the EWC code tonnages by the relevant standard or lower tax rate.

Some figures are rounded in final tables and, as a consequence, tables may not sum exactly.

Quality assurance

Tax returns are checked by the tax compliance team as they are received and missing returns are followed up.

The following quality assurance checks are carried out by statisticians during production of the publication:

• The number of operators and sites submitting tax returns in the new quarter is checked. If the figures have changed since the previous quarter, this is checked with the tax compliance team to make sure that no expected returns are missing.
• Inconsistencies in the tax return are checked and anomalies output for checking. For example, we check whether gross SLfT is consistent with tonnages, and whether SLfT payable is consistent with gross SLfT and credits claimed.
• Discrepancies between the total standard and lower rate tonnages per site and quarter are checked between the two administrative tables that hold this information.
• Time series charts of tax declared due and tonnages by site and operator are produced and inspected to check for changes to trends.
• The final publication is checked for changes in figures compared to the previous version of the publication, to make sure these are due only to updated versions of tax returns being received.

Known data quality issues

There is a known issue with discrepancies between the total standard and lower rate tonnages between site level tonnages recorded on the tax return and the totals of the European Waste Catalogue (EWC) code tonnages recorded on the return from 2015/16 to 2018/19. For these years, the tonnages from the site level part of the return are used as the main source of waste tonnages, with tonnages by EWC code being adjusted to match as described above.

Comparison to published accounts

Revenue Scotland annual report and financial statements are sourced from our corporate documents.

The accounts report revenue against the year in which the revenue was paid, with accrual adjustments in April and May to include revenue from Q4 returns in the financial year that the return was for. Unlike the statistics, any additional revenue (or reductions in revenue) paid during a financial year (but potentially relating to earlier years) will be reported as revenue in the accounts during that year and may lead to a difference between SLfT reported in the statistics and the accounts. The accounts also do not include tax if a case is at tribunal. The accounts and statistics generally show the same trends although there are small discrepancies between them each year.

Revisions policy

Amendments and corrections can be made by the operator to SLfT returns up to one year following the filing date. After 12 months, changes to SLfT tax amounts due can occur as a result of Revenue Scotland compliance activities. These changes can be significant, but are far less common than amendments during the 12 month period. As a result, revising SLfT statistics after 12 months could potentially allow information to be gleaned regarding specific taxpayers. Hence, for statistical disclosure control, we finalise these statistics 12 months after the filing date and figures will not be revised more than 12 months after first publication.

Corrections

For the annual data in the 2024/25 Q4 publication, the method used to produce statistics by EWC code was reviewed and corrected. An error was found in the method for calculating the all-time breakdown of tonnages and gross SLfT by EWC code published in our Annual Summary of Trends publication, which was excluding some recent years of data. Additionally, for 2019/20 onwards it was found data by EWC code included water tonnage within the standard tonnage field. This is inconsistent with the way that standard tonnage is recorded in the main data table used to produce quarterly and annual tonnages. We therefore adjusted the method used to produce data by EWC code for these years to first remove water tonnages from the standard tonnages. These two changes have made differences to EWC code data for past years. For example, the proportion of gross SLfT from each waste code group (20 03 01, 19 12 12 and other/unknown) has changed by up to 20 percentage points in some years in the 2024/25 Q4 publication compared to previously published figures.

Future developments and feedback

In the future we plan to add statistics on Scottish Aggregates Tax into this release to form an ‘Environmental taxes’ statistics publication.

We are always interested to hear from our users about how our statistics are used, and how they can be improved. For enquiries about this publication please contact the Revenue Scotland Statistics & Management Information Team at statistics@revenue.scot.

Related publications

Note that different countries may have different tax rates which should be considered when comparing the statistics.

Environmental Taxes Bulletin: Published by HMRC. This annual bulletin provides details of Landfill Tax declared and waste disposed to landfill in England and Northern Ireland.

Welsh Landfill Disposals Tax: Quarterly statistics for Landfill Disposals Tax published by the Welsh Revenue Authority. Data includes the weight of waste and tax due on waste disposed to landfill.

Scottish Waste Data: Data collected and published by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, covering a number of different aspects of waste and volumes of waste landfilled per site.

Scotland's Economic and Fiscal Forecasts: The Scottish Fiscal Commission produces forecasts on revenue from Scottish Landfill Tax.