Appendix A

Date of submission versus effective date

Revenue Scotland’s monthly LBTT statistics and the data in this publication are based on the date the LBTT return is submitted to Revenue Scotland. Generally, this is different from the effective date (generally the data that a land transaction is completed) as taxpayers have 30 days from the effective date to submit their LBTT return. However, nearly three quarters (74%) of returns are submitted within a week of the effective date and 88% within two weeks (see Figure 19). A small proportion of returns are submitted later than the required 30 days and are liable for financial penalties. No time-lag exists for data produced by date of submission. Revenue Scotland is aware of interest in data by effective date but there are good reasons to publish statistics by submission date.

• Publishing data based on the submission date rather than the effective date allows Revenue Scotland to publish monthly LBTT statistics in a timely manner. Around two months would need to be allowed to pass from the month end before statistics relating to that month could be published. This would ensure that 99% of LBTT returns with an effective date relating to that month had been received and would minimise the need for revisions.
• The data will be subject to revision only as a result of changes to the LBTT returns submitted (e.g. a claim for repayment of ADS) and not as a result of the submission of LBTT returns relating to an earlier period (which would be the case for statistics produced by effective date).
• Published statistics include actual values rather than estimates for the most recent months.
• Trends observed in the published data will be broadly the same as those on an effective date basis, with the largest deviations occurring at the ends of the series and near policy changes.

It is worth noting that the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) typically requests data by effective date, which it uses to produce and evaluate forecasts of LBTT revenue. The data provided allows the SFC to more accurately examine the impact of significant events, e.g. policy changes. The data includes LBTT returns with an effective date up to and including the month two months prior to the date on which the data was extracted from the tax system. Revenue Scotland subsequently publishes the data provided to the SFC on the LBTT data requests section of its website.

Figure 19: Proportion of LBTT returns received by number of weeks between submission and effective date (for returns with effective date in 2023/24, excluding lease reviews)

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Figure 19 shows the proportion of LBTT returns received by the number of weeks between the date of submission and the effective date. The first category (<1 week) represents 0 to 6 days (inclusive), the second category (1-2 weeks) represents 7 to 13 days (inclusive), and so on.