Scotland Bill

No, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I do not want to burden the taxpayer unnecessarily with additional questions and pieces of paper and that I think the residency basis is the simplest way to deal with this issue. The problem is that we have a floating definition of what is a UK resident taxpayer, and from that we are trying to define in very exact terms what is a Scottish resident taxpayer. That is the point at which there could be challenges, and sometimes mischief in that people might try to change their declaration of where they believe they are resident. This situation is unlikely to arise for the vast majority of taxpayers in Scotland; most of them will be faced with a very simple exercise. Nevertheless, as I have pointed out, in other jurisdictions with devolved income tax there are ways in which people have to declare where their residence is that we currently do not have in the UK. I want the Minister to say whether the Government are aware of any potential problems, and what measures they intend to put in place to avoid them, so that the maximum level of tax that is due is collected and returned to the Scottish Government, and so that administration is kept to a minimum. All hon. Members will be concerned about the cost to the Exchequer, and also about the costs to individual businesses. That is why I am asking these questions, but I agree that residency is the easiest way to define who should be liable to tax. I also appreciate that a decision has been taken not to include interest on dividends and on savings. People will comment that that perhaps creates a degree of unfairness because some individuals get the majority of their income from those sources, but I acknowledge that there are complex and expensive practical difficulties in applying a residency test for those types of revenue, and that ultimately the benefit may not be great. We therefore understand why the Government have phrased the clauses in this way, but the devil is in the detail of defining exactly what they will mean in practice.