 I welcome members of the press in public to the fourth meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2016. First of all, I will ask all those present to ensure that their electronic items are switched to flight mode so that they do not affect the work of the committee. Colleagues, we have apologies today from Tavis Scott. I move to agenda item number one, which is that we take a decision that items number four and five should be taken in private. I will agree. We now move to agenda item number two, which is evidence on the controller and auditor general report entitled the administration of the Scottish rate of income tax 2014-15 and the EGS report entitled the administration of the Scottish rate of income tax 2014-15 report to the Scottish Parliament's Public Audit Committee. I would like to welcome our panel of witnesses this morning, the Kirling Gardner, the Auditor General for Scotland, Sir Amius Morse, who is the controller and auditor general, and Stephen Corbishley, who is the director of national audit office, and Serah Walker, who is the deputy director and head of the devolution unit HMRC. I understand that no witnesses wish to make an opening statement, so we will move straight to questions. First, I welcome the panel and I welcome you in particular, Mr Amius. Can I just ask you to give us some overview of the document that you have provided, and in particular in relation to some of the challenges that you will face in connection with the IT implementation? Thank you. Well, I will do that, and I will ask Stephen Corbishley to supplement my comments. We were given very full access to documentation. We have necessarily looked at what is available at this point in time, and we published our report just before the communications round undertaken by HMRC to alert Scottish rate of income tax payers that they were considered to be in that category. There are a number of things that we do not know, and we did not know what the announced rate would be. Some of our remarks in the report are slightly anticipatory of what might happen. You can see that we have a positive view of the IT arrangements, and you can see that we give a warning about the level of effort on establishing the most difficult thing about this whole set of arrangements, which is establishing clearly who should be paying the Scottish rate of income tax. I will just give one remark on that, if I may, which is that I think that it is important to push on with identifying those people. We are recording the report that we are not critical of it, but we just remark that not an awful lot has happened so far, not a huge amount of resources have been put to that so far. I think that it is important to push on now, while the rates are, so to speak, neutral, because if it were to be the case that there was any differentially higher rate in future, people may be a little bit more backward about coming forward in identifying themselves and being co-operative, so I think that the time when it is in, so to speak, slack water is a time to establish a population as clearly as possible. I do not think that I have any disagreement with HMLC about that, but I do think that this is a valuable time to get a really good grip on who we are talking about, which, as I say, is quite, you know, certainly for people who are working outside Scotland, establishing that clearly is going to be a considerable challenge. Can you confirm if there is any evidence that tax advisers are currently giving advice to clients on who they should be domiciled or how they should approach this? Well, I mean, the only advice they could give, as a very much long former tax adviser myself, so not reliable in that area, the only advice they could give would depend on whether or not there was a positive or negative variance in the Scottish rate, so I do not see why any, but what other advice people could reasonably give. So, if there is an advantage, a tax adviser might say there is an advantage, but I do not see why, I mean, no reputable tax adviser would involve concealment or dishonesty, so it would give advice involving that. So, I think it is a question of seeing what, which way things develop. Colin Goodlaw. Nothing to add to that, convener, as the controller and auditor general says, it will depend very much about whether there are differential tax rates in place in future. We, like the NAO, do not look directly at what tax advisers are doing, but it will keep an eye on and I imagine HMRC very much well as well. So, can I just ask, and just play this out then, so we become differential rates exist across the two council in Scotland, I think, and gone in Wales in the different positions in terms of the tax rates that are in place? I mean, is it feasible that we could end up the Cayman Islands of the United Kingdom because of the differential rates that exist? Is that a possibility? Well, everything, I mean, the resemblance between Scotland and the Cayman Islands may be a little bit remote in some ways, but I would say if you, you've seen other other tax jurisdictions make use of their tax regime to attract economic activity, I mean, you don't need to go to the Cayman Islands, let go to Ireland. So you don't need me to say these things to you, but these possibilities exist in quite clearly how you decide to divide the fiscal burden or benefit between the state and taxpayers will probably have an effect on a fairly small proportion of the taxpayer population. Those who are, in any case, and it is a very small proportion, although it might be of high economic value, who are actually living, have a residence in Scotland and are living out of Scotland or otherwise are tax residents in Scotland but are high earners and temporary visitors, those are the two populations where volatility is likely to exist. I think that that's fair, isn't it? Let me stop and let the authority talk about this. I think the important thing about establishing Scottish taxpayer status are those two aspects to this. One is the mass market where we have done a lot of work over the last few months to make sure that we are contacting everybody we think is on our books already to confirm their Scottish taxpayer status, that I can give you some more details about that if you like, but, as Amy Smith and Caroline have said, the important thing once the rates start to diverge is to focus on the people for whom that might make quite a significant difference to their income and try to anticipate their behaviour. The fact that the rate only applies to earned income and not to investment income makes it, in a sense, easier to get a grip on, if you like. We're looking at the people where their earnings from their activity is in play, but one of the pieces of preparatory work that we are doing is focusing on our high earning population, people who are dealt with in our high net worth units. We have done a piece of work in the current year looking specifically at Scottish resident high earners, making sure that we understand their resident status, where we think there is a risk that they may have two addresses and might therefore want to shift their residents from one to the other. It's absolutely true that having the first year of the regime come in with no difference in the rates makes it easier for us, in a way, because we are able to do the work to establish where people are resident against the background where there's no incentive for them particularly to try and convince us that they are in one place rather than the other. Once we've got that baseline, once a different rate comes in, then obviously we will be looking to observe people's behaviour if there is a shift in response to a different rate. We are doing everything we can to be prepared for that sort of scenario. Can I just ask finally, in connection with the IT systems that have to be implemented, to confirm for the record what the costs of that would be, what the expected costs are and the costs so far? If the IT system that's put in place is considered, will that system be a UK-based system or are there some options for that system to be devolved in the IT system? The figures that we have published for the cost of IT change are between £10 million and £15 million for the entire implementation of the Scottish rate. We are reviewing those figures now and we will publish an updated figure in the annual report that's due to come out later in this year, but they are all changes to our UK-based system. There is no self-contained Scottish rate system that could be based elsewhere. The important thing about the Scottish rate is that it's totally integrated into the income tax system which is run as a UK system. That makes the changes low-risk. They are changes to our basic PEYE and self-assessment systems just to take account of a different rate, but there are no self-contained Scottish rate in IT systems. Can I refer to page 14 of your Scottish Rate of Income Tax project board risk register? It's quite assuring to see that out of 13 separate risks, 8 are moderate and others are low, but it's really to draw attention to the three that are high risk. If I could start with the point that the convener is just making, if I could just read, communications are unclear for those who are not Scottish taxpayers—it's the one, two, three, one, two, three, four, the sixth one—communications are unclear for those who are not Scottish taxpayers. For example, non-UK residents living in Scotland, or the rest of the UK population, are resulting in possible confusion and erroneous customer contact. I'm not clear about—I just thought that you had to live in Scotland permanently, domiciled in Scotland, you were a Scottish taxpayer. I think that the example that we gave when you were here previously, Mr Moore—sir, ames, I should maybe say. The example given was oil workers from, say, Sunderland working in the North Sea, they would not be domiciled in Scotland. What I'm not clear about is, given that we're all looking at our manifestos just now for the Scottish Parliament elections and we've already got commitments from my party, Labour Party and others about varying tax rates. If someone living in Scotland, say, had an address in England, if the tax rate rose in Scotland to a significant degree on earned income, can they just use their English address? Or do you have to be domiciled in England for so many months of the year? I'm not familiar with tax exiles or Cayman islands, but if someone in Scotland is a bit annoyed about paying more tax than the same person earning the same income in England, how easy or difficult would it be just to get an address in England to avoid paying that tax? What's the criteria? Can I answer that? The rule, as you say, is that you have to have your main residence in Scotland for the majority of the year, so just using a correspondence address. What is the main residence to me? If I've got a house in Edinburgh and a house in London and I drop between the two, what defines the main? In most cases, it's a matter of fact, so one place will be your home and the other place will be a temporary residence. So the sorts of things we're looking at are where your children go to school, where you're registered with the GP, those kinds of things where you would consider your main residence for your general living arrangements would be, and for the vast majority of people that is very easy to determine. You may not have children at school and you're entitled to be registered with the GP wherever you live. I've done that for 20 years in Inverness in Edinburgh and I've been registered with two GPs. We haven't set out a very specific list of criteria, but we have published guidance on the website that explains the type of things that we will take into account to determine where a main place of residence will be. If you haven't established definite criteria, then potentially, if the higher tax rate goes up to 50 pence in the pound or 60 or whatever, it would actually be very easy for a Scottish taxpayer just to say, I've got an address in Carlyle, it could be a single room or, you know, that would be quite easy to do to become an English tax exile. If I could be allowed to reach into what I know about this, there have been a lot of tax cases about residencies. There are quite well-established criteria for judging the facts. Obviously, you look at each situation on its merits, but it's not like inspectors of taxes will find us an incredibly difficult thing to understand because we've had all this with people trying to show that they're resident or non-resident in the UK tax jurisdiction. It's not new territory, really, it's being applied in Scotland, but it's well understood. You between Scotland and England, and it is a question that is being asked. I'm not disagreeing with that at all. All I'm trying to reassure you of is that, from the point of view of how you go about establishing it, we're not in terribly new ground here. People have been necessary to establish domicile and main residence for tax purposes for forever, and therefore there's quite a lot of expertise in how you go about it. They're not making it up as they go along, but it is true that it's not... There isn't some open and shut answer. You look at the circumstances of each person and all of the various things that have built up over the years that you use to determine where their main base is, if I can call it that, and that's how it kind of works, I think. Yes, that's right. And there is a fallback if in a particular case it is impossible to actually establish that one particular place is the main residence, we can go to counting the number of days that is spent in England rather than Scotland over the year. We think that there will be very few cases when we need to go into that level of detail, but it is a fallback if we need it. It would be quite difficult to prove if you're driving up and down the road in minutes. It sounds like it's going to be a lot... If the eligibility criteria is not clear, if the example you give of registered with a GP, we've got a GP sitting here today with a bad cold, but if that's an example, it's not the best one. Not everyone has children going to school or to nursery, so to me it doesn't seem clear as things stand today. I think that it's something that will, as Amias has said, this isn't a new issue for HMRC, but it is something that we will need to keep under review and develop. We have got guidance out there that we have developed in consultation with tax professionals in Scotland. We've put out a number of examples, for instance, for students, people in the military, those sorts of cases where there are people who do move around a lot and there may be issues for. We've tried to address the obvious questions as to where there might be people who are in doubt, but we'll keep that under review absolutely. I appreciate, convener, that it's not new, but it is new within the United Kingdom. We are looking at new territory here. Communications are unclear for those who are not Scottish taxpayers. What's the example given for non-UK residents living in Scotland? Where does resulting in possible confusion and erroneous customer contract—what group of people are we talking about here that have been determined to be high risk? It isn't high risk. The writing in the column is the degree of the effectiveness of our controls. The effectiveness of your controls is high, so that's good news. I should be looking at the very low— The reference to non-UK residents is simply that you have to be a UK resident in the first place before you're in the frame for choosing between whether you're a Scottish resident or a UK resident. If you're a non-UK resident, you shouldn't need to worry about the Scottish rate at all. The risk that we're talking about is that we've got people who are being confused and needing to contact us where they ought not to need to be concerned about Scottish rates at all. Given that it's not high risk, are we saying that everything is good, everything is working well? It all seems fairly positive from what I'm reading—good working relationships between HMRC and the Scottish Government. That's what we've been hoping and what we were promised, and that all sounds good. Are there any risks that you would identify going forward? From my point of view, we are monitoring all those risks very carefully. The most important thing is ensuring that we have a high level of confidence that we've accurately identified Scottish taxpayers. We're in the middle of our process of the initial identification, so we've written to 2.6 million people in Scotland. We are now dealing with address changes that have been notified to us. As a result of that, we've got some more advertising that's due to come along in February to help remind people and particularly remind people who may not have had a letter from us who should have had. That's the main area where we are continuing to pay a lot of attention. As we move into the next new financial year, we will be looking at what continuing monitoring we need to do and preparation for compliance work, where we think that that's necessary. Just a couple of quick clarifications. SRIT isn't actually a devolved tax, is it? The DWP paper here makes that clear. It's still part of the UK tax system. The other small part—I mean, I'm taking the nods as being affirmative. It specifies here that, in the NAO report, paragraph 1.3, they're giving an example of people who are always deemed to be Scottish and they say, Member of Parliament for Scottish constituency. I presume that includes MEPs, list MSPs and so on. It's not restricted in terms of being constituency. Again, I'm taking the nods as being affirmative. Then just a couple of issues that have been highlighted here again in the NAO report. This question of relief at source, which affects, obviously, the pension companies, there's a two-year transition period in place as of this year, as far as I understand. Presumably, there's been talks with the pension industry on this. It doesn't seem to me a terribly complex thing. Maybe you can give me a bit more information on that. The thing about relief at source is that, for the first time, the pension providers will need to be able to distinguish between their contributors on the basis of whether they are potentially eligible for relief at a different rate. If they're Scottish taxpayers and the Scottish basic rate is different, they'll be entitled to a different amount of tax relief. For the generality of the Scottish rate through PAYE, employers have always been able to distinguish between their employees and apply a different tax rate because of the tax code system that we have. For the pension relief at source, we've never had that kind of mechanism to distinguish between contributors, and therefore we haven't got an automatic system in place that allows the pension scheme to calculate their claim for tax relief based on the different status of different taxpayers. They're having to develop those systems. There are a wide variety of companies who provide pensions, insurers' companies and different pension companies. They all have different types of IT systems. They all have different challenges about the way they keep their records of their customers. We are allowing them an extra time to make sure that they are able to distinguish and identify their taxpayers on the basis of the rate that they're liable to, so that they can make claims at the right rate. Surely pension companies already deal with the multiplicity of jurisdictions. Surely it's not that complicated for them? In order to do that, they need to be able to identify each contributor by their national insurance number, and they need to be able to confirm with us using that national insurance number, whether they are all or aren't a Scottish taxpayer, and that communication that is to-made communication. On the bulk of numbers, they are giving us the right information as to the identity of their contributors and we are then helping them to understand the rate at which they should charge. It is a major change for pension schemes. Against the background of an awful lot of change, other types of change for the pension industry as well, and that's why we agreed that we would give them extra time to get ready for it. Is the two-year period reasonable? I think they was agreed with the industry at the time. There have been extensive consultations with them, and that's been agreed that that's the right amount of time to allow. Clearly there will be complications if, at the end of that period, we haven't got that in place. We will have an interim arrangement in place if the rate is different. That only arises if the basic rate in Scotland is different from the basic rate in the UK. If the basic rate is different in those two years—16, 17, 17, 18—we have an interim solution that would involve HMRC making changes to PAYE codes to adjust the amount of relief, which is a bit messy, but we will get the right amount of money to the right people. So it would be accurate? It would be accurate. You would be all lost to the Scottish Government. No, exactly. We would get the right amount of money to the claimants. However, we are hoping that, once we get the system in place with the pension industry, that will be a much smoother and much more automatic system. The plan is that that will be in place if the basic rate is different in 2018-19. Turning to the NEO report paragraph 4 on the key findings, it says that only limited resources have been put into specific planning for potential tax losses as a result of SRIT. Perhaps you can elaborate a little bit more on that. We are talking here about the resources that we were putting into planning for compliance in the year 2014-15. More recently we have obviously increased the amount of work we are doing on compliance. The work that I mentioned in relation to high-network individuals is an example of that. We are also doing quite a lot of work with large and major employers to make sure that we have a good assurance that their PYE systems will operate the Scottish rate correctly. So we are now ramping up the work that we are doing on compliance. The risk is clearly less acute when the rates are the same as opposed to a differential rate between England and Scotland. However, it is still important for us to make sure that that allocation between Scottish tax rates and the rest of the UK tax payers is as accurate as we can make it. We are making sure that we have plans in place to support that. Do you have any idea what the percentage of tax collection is on income tax? I presume that there is a small amount that is not collected for one reason or another. For the tax on earned income, which is what we are talking about now, we believe that around 99 per cent of the tax comes in automatically. The tax gap is relatively small. We have already been talking about tax evasion and avoidance. Clearly, there will be a lot of inventive reasons on both sides of the border if the tax rates move, because what we have been talking about now is assuming that the Scottish tax rates are going to go up and the tax rates south of the border might remain the same, but it could be the other way around. We need processes in place to catch tax evasion on both sides. Is that being looked at in terms of not just on an assumption that the Scottish rate is going to go up and that there has to be measures for Scottish tax payers trying to relocate or to become tax residents south of the border, but it could be vice versa? Absolutely. The important thing for us is to get it right. It is not particularly to maximise the tax on one side or the other. The sorts of compliance strategies that we are looking at are equally applicable, whether it is a higher rate in Scotland or a lower rate in Scotland. Richard Simpson? Yes. I want to ask something about the DWP side of things, if I may. I do not know whether our witnesses are comfortable to look at that. The costs in terms of the HMRC side are now becoming clearer as we develop, but the memorandum of understanding with the DWP simply says that it will charge the Scottish Government quarterly in arrears. Do we have any idea of what those costs are likely to be? I am afraid that it is not within our scope of speaking for my office's work, so we cannot look at that separately at some point, but we have not looked at it for the purpose of today's hearing. It is not in this report. You will have noted the exchange of letters that relate to that. This is clearly another adjustment that will be required around the Scottish rate of income tax, and we will be doing some audit work on it proportionate amount from the Scottish Government's point of view, as you would expect, as we are around the HMRC interaction. The exchange of letters is very recent, so it will come into our planning for the audit year that is about to start, and we will provide the committee with more information about that at an appropriate point. We are expecting it to be very small amounts of money involved, though. The Finance Committee received a list of the risks in October or November last year, and now we have the new report here. Have there been any shifts in the risks between the two reports to the Finance Committee and the committee? As we can see, there is nothing that I need to alert you to. We are talking about the conversation so far related to the main risks, as I see it. Primarily, on top of everything else, we have successfully identified the right group of taxpayers. Back on the risk register and partly answered the question that my colleague Richard Simpson has just been going on about, there are a couple of things that come through as moderates. The assessment of effectiveness in the risk register is just a bit of clarification. I apologise if it is going over ground, but it is to do with the IT systems. The item 7, where it says that the project does not manage the IT complexity in planned technological change, etc. The other one was the fact that the Department for Work and Pensions, HMRC, is not joined up in its delivery at this moment of threat. Both are seen as moderate in terms of the difficulties that are being faced. Perhaps it is the fact that we have seen a number of IT projects around which it has been claimed to be perhaps going to plan but perhaps not. Given the fact that you have rated it moderate, how clear or confident are we that these assessment is absolutely correct by the systems that have been used before and obviously by various Government departments in terms of the effectiveness of delivery? I can see the way that the committee has laid out the risk of being misleading. What we are describing as moderate is what HMRC controls, not the level of risk. That is quite important. We are saying that we actually think that this is probably the least risky route to getting an IT capacity in this area by using a system that is actually working well and simply modifying that in a not very large way in order to deliver SRIT. That is far less risky than what would have happened if you had said that we are going to go off and try to write a new system. It would have been a waste of money to do it, frankly, and much more risky. As IT projects go, we do not regard this as a risky project. What we simply stated here is that the quality of controls over the project are moderate rather than very high. That probably reflects the reasonably confident attitude on behalf of HMRC about carrying the project out. All the changes that are necessary to our IT systems in order to launch the thing in April—the changes to PAYE—to cope with the special tax codes that have been given out to people who are liable to the Scottish rate and to register and take account of changes of address and register the date of changes of address. Those have all been put into the system and are there and working already. The next tranche of IT change will relate to the self-assessment system because people will not put in their self-assessment returns for 2016-17 until after the end of that year, so we have got longer to make sure that those changes are in place. However, those are relatively routine changes for us as they go with the grain, if you like, of the PAYE and self-assessment systems, and we are very confident that that will go smoothly. I ask one more question. It is actually in relation to number 11. Maybe you just expand because I do not quite understand who you are referring to here, but it says, other organisations, public information about SRIT that is incorrect, misleading or wrongly time leading to customer confusion and contact. Who is it that you are generally referring to? That is generally, for instance, in the press there is an article about how the Scottish rate of income tax works and it is wrong or misleading. That can cause a big rush of inquiries and phone calls to HMRC to deal with that confusion and help people understand. Some of these risks are about levels of contact and levels of phone calls that we might need to be prepared for. That is one reason why we might get a rush of phone calls that we would have to be able to cope with. Is it just wasn't clear if it was media or if it was other government departments? Well, it could be anybody, but I think that the media is an example. I am just wondering if I can ask you about your memorandum of understanding with the Auditor General. I think that it tells me a story, which I think is correct, that at section 5 you say that the Auditor General does not have any statutory right to access to the data that you do have. Equally, at paragraph 10 you tell me that you are independent of government, which I very much welcome. At 31 you tell me that you both are committed to working together in an environment of professional respect and promoting a culture of openness, which is absolutely what we want to hear. Then I go back to paragraph 6, which says that you are happy to work together to ensure that the Parliament receives appropriate reports. The difficulty I have lies in being clear about what appropriateness might be and who is going to draw the line. Quite frankly, what I am, my successes and the signs in this committee are going to be able to do if you and your successes draw the line somewhere where we are not very comfortable because I think you do hold the pen that decides where the line is. I am just wondering if you could explain how you see that. I think the answer to that is at two levels, if I may. First of all, we are keen to handle this in a way where once we understand what the rules are and exactly what the implementation of the Scotland Act, exactly what is called for, then it would be possible for us to have a discussion about what nature of assurance can we give or should we give, and it actually flows out of the nature of the information to a very large extent. What would be a good thing to get done? First, you will know if it is not working right if we do not agree on it. That will give rise to something. I will strive hard to avoid that. Supposing there is an eventuality that we do not agree, the most likely reason for that would be that there is some clash between preserving my position in regard to the UK Parliament and what I might agree to for purposes of giving assurance to the Scottish Parliament. I am sorry if that sounds a bit theoretical, but what I am trying to say is that my primary job is providing assurance to the UK Parliament, and it is very important to me. I am sure that you do not have to be troubled with my work up here, but I do try and do that in a pretty forthright way. Therefore, independence is extremely important to me. If there was anything that was the most likely reason why we would have to work our way through something, it would be if it was likely to have an unplanned effect on my independence in the UK Parliament. I think at that point we just have to work our way through that. I am with you there, and I respect your independence as I do of the Auditor General's independence. You can be complete pains for governments, and that is what we pay you to do, so I do not have any trouble at all about that. Nor do I have any trouble that you might occasionally disagree. I suspect what does worry me is what happens when that disagreement comes down to somebody's actually got to pay for making an effort to do some work, because I suspect you and your successors will find a way of working with each other. But if there is actually a disagreement about who is going to get the work to check something, to dig into something, and you are saying, hang on, I do not want to pay, and the Auditor General cannot do it because you are the person who holds the purse strings, it is that kind of operational issue, which I guess I am just trying to explore. I am not incidentally, for one moment, suggesting that we will occur between you two good folk, I think that this might be somewhere down the track when we are talking about your successes. Well, I think that that is a valid point, who is resourcing whom, and therefore we need to find some way of having that discussion with the commission that funds me, which at the moment funds me to do primarily UK Government work, and it would be quite a big change for them to say, well, we are prepared to fund you to do work in this way, and it would also depend on what the agreed interpretation of the legislation or the rules and legislation about accountability were at a Government level. To be quite honest, I am rather keen not to get out in front of that discussion. I do not think that it is my job to try and determine these things, but I can understand that there might be issues that needed to be able to be determined. I think that that is unlikely to be a big problem. If it was the case that, for example, this committee wanted a lot of work done in my jurisdiction or in my remit, which meant that I had to do a lot of additional work, I would have to have a discussion then with the TPC about what they regarded as reasonable or unreasonable. I am quite sure that they would take an attitude that, unless it was really going to make a big difference to my budget, that would not be it. I do not see that as being something that they rushed to be difficult about, but if it was substantial, we would have to reach some agreement between Westminster and the Scottish Parliament, and that agreement would have to be broken at a level above myself. If we identify that as a bloc, we will put it up and say that this needs to be resolved at a parliamentary level, not something that I think is my job to try and be arbitrary about. I do not want to be arbitrary. I want to make sure that it is discussed properly at a governmental level. I am grateful for that. I think that it is useful to put that on the record. We might get there, and I hope that we do not, of course. Can I add to that very briefly, convener? I think that it is important that you hear from me as well. As Amias has said, his primary responsibility is to provide assurance to the UK Parliament, my primary responsibility is to provide assurance to this Parliament, and those two roles in the past have had very little to do with each other in lots of ways. The way in which the Scottish rate of income tax has been set up means that we now have a shared area of interest in relation to HMRC's collection of the tax on behalf of the Scottish Government. I am very clear, as the member of understanding sets out, that the responsibility for auditing HMRC and the rights that go with that sits with the CNAG and not with me. That is why I was happy to agree to the committee's request to provide an annual report providing additional assurance on the work that has been planned and carried out and the conclusions from it. It is possible that in future I will feel that this Parliament would want or benefit from more assurance than the CNAG feels is appropriate to provide. That is exactly the sort of issue that I would draw to your attention in my report that sits alongside the CNAG's report. Resolving that would be a matter that is above our pay grades, but you would have the assurance that there is work that needs to be done or, hypothetically, that I disagree with the conclusions reached by the CNAG on the basis of the work that he had done. It is an important check and balance in the system, reflecting the new arrangement of shared dependency on HMRC to collect the tax. There are just a couple of questions regarding the risk register. It has already been touched upon regarding the point 13, the communication products that are designed to inform the UK population in relation to strict or not-delivered-to-time-and-specification. When Colin Carey asked the question, Mr Walker gave the example of the media. I am just interested in the panel's opinions on whether there potentially should be some additional work that they are taking with the media so that they can be fully informed in terms of what strict is going to be about, how it is going to be delivered, so that they could potentially be part of the solution to getting the correct information out to the wider population, as compared to potentially putting in columns or information that is inaccurate, then having that adverse effect in terms of your sales and the huge amount of additional phone calls that you would receive. That has been a big part of our communication strategy. Around the time when we did the big mail shot in December and sent out letters to the Scottish text pain population, we did quite a lot of proactive work with the media in Scotland. We issued background material, and we briefed journalists in Scotland to make sure that they had material so that they could put stuff in their publications to explain to people what the Scottish Income Tax is all about and what the letter was that they were about to get and what they needed to do. That led to quite a number of articles in Scottish press at the time—quite a lot of activity online and on Twitter—for following that up with some direct advertising in the next couple of months. There will be advertising in the press online and some radio coverage. The message that we are trying to get out is a very simple one. It is to make sure that we have your up-to-date address so that we can correctly apply the Scottish rate. The announcement of the rate in the draft budget in December was another opportunity for us to draw attention to the Scottish rate, because the announcement that the rate would not be different again attracted a certain amount of publicity. We were able to use that again to make sure that we were giving the background information to journalists so that they could understand it. I think that we were pretty happy with the coverage that we got and the level of accuracy of the coverage that we got back in December. That is helpful. The second question was about point 1 on the register. The Scottish Parliament does not agree that the Scottish Government's Scottish rate resolution is resulting in a late change of rate. It is also marked down as a low in terms of the assessment of the effectiveness of the controls in place. Can you provide a bit more information on that, please? There is my opposed to the question that, obviously, at the moment in this Parliament, the Scottish Government probably would not be an issue if we had the election taking place in May and the elective would determine what they would make up if it was going to be of the Parliament after that. The legislation requires the Scottish Parliament to set a rate by the end of March, so by the end of the financial year. There is a rate in place for the new financial year. If that decision were to be taken right up at the very end of the year, we can still apply the Scottish rate, but that gives rise to additional costs because we would have to change people's tax codes after the start of the year. That is extra cost for us and more disruption for employers. The memorandum of understanding that we have with the Scottish Government asks them to give us an indication of the rate by the end of November before the start of the year. That is the assumption that we will use in order to settle all the PYE codes and all the tax collection mechanisms that we need to do. That minimises the cost and disruption, so that is the way that we would prefer to do it. However, the legislation allows the Scottish Parliament to not set the rate until the end of March. We can cope with that. There is no problem, but it creates additional cost and disruption, so the risk is reflecting the fact that there would be additional work to do and there would be additional cost if that rate decision was taken at the very last minute. I would assume that, when the legislation was going through the parliamentary process, that that point will have been raised by ourselves to the Scottish Government. Indeed, the Scottish Government is very aware of what we need in order to be able to operate PYE, so that is why we asked them to give us that assumption at the beginning of December. They know that, if, for whatever reason, the rate was set differently at the end of March, it would cost the Scottish Government additional money and it would be more disruptive for employers. The point that I raised was that, when the bill was going through the parliamentary process, for all this to take place, did HMRC actually raise that as a point? Yes, that is 2012. I am pretty sure that it would have been discussed at the time, certainly that the time limits are in the act and so the process for having a Scottish Parliament resolution setting the rate and the implications of the timing of that certainly would have been discussed at the time. Thank you very much. A brief question from Mary Scanlon. Yes, it would have been quite embarrassing if we had two auditor generals today and you'd both worked together in preparing for the introduction of the tax and you'd gone way over budget. However, that's not the case. In Caroline, your report today states that you've worked well together and the estimated cost of setting up the Scottish rate of income tax is decreased by £10 million. We're very used to increases here. Is this a result of incredible efficiency on your parts or did you overestimate in the first place? That's down to us. The original estimate was £40 million to £45 million. That was given back in 2010, so it's a very old estimate, if you like, and it was done at a very early stage of us not having done the work on what would be involved. Between £30 million and £35 million was the estimate that we published earlier in 2015. I think that because we now have information about the amount of contact and the amount of activity that we've had to do around the mail shot that, again, has been less than we expected, and so I think we will reassess that overall estimate. Probably the best explanation is that the original estimate was quite a generous one, because we didn't at that point have a very good idea of what was going to be involved. We've put a lot of work into refining the plans certainly for the IT change, but we also had to make an assumption about how much activity and phone calls and contact we would get. Again, we are at the size of caution there, and it's turned out to be less. That's why that estimate has come down over time. I appreciate that. Given that you estimate that you're now 20 per cent under budget, if I could perhaps ask Caroline a question, the implementation has been 20 per cent under budget as we've heard, but revenue Scotland staff have gone 20 per cent over budget. I just wonder if you could explain that. I appreciate that it's more to do with our next session, but in the context of looking at savings in one budget and revenue Scotland, a good 20 per cent over their budget. I think that the convener would probably prefer me to answer in detail under the next agenda item. In broad terms, the answer is similar, but the estimate was made at an early stage, and then, as the scale of the task became clearer, the budget also became clearer, but I'm happy to answer in more detail under the next agenda item, Ms Scanlon. I thank the panel for the contribution this morning. Can I now move the committee into a brief suspension to allow for the change over witnesses? Item number three, which is the evidence on the AGS report entitled Implementing the Scotland Act 2012. I'd like to welcome Caroline Gardner, Auditor General of Scotland, Mark Taylor, the Assistant Director and Gordon Smaill, who is the Senior Manager of Audit Scotland. I understand that the Auditor General is a brief opening statement. Taken together, the powers in the 2012 Scotland Act and the current Scotland Bill have significant implications for the Scottish Parliament's financial responsibilities. I published my first report on the implementation of the financial powers in the 2012 Act in December 2014, and the report that I'm bringing to the committee today provides an update on progress since then. We've already had a discussion this morning about HMRC's preparation for the Scottish rate of income tax. My report on the Scotland Act notes that the Scottish Government and HMRC are working well together and, as you heard, reflects the findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General about HMRC's preparations for the Scottish rate of income tax. I'll therefore focus my remarks this morning on the other two areas in this report, how effectively Revenue Scotland implemented the two new devolved taxes, and how the Scottish Government is developing its financial management and reporting to accommodate the new powers. First of all, on the devolved taxes, I'm pleased to report that Revenue Scotland successfully implemented the two devolved taxes on time. Revenue Scotland effectively managed the risk highlighted in my report in December 2014, and ensured that the IT system and the people needed to collect and manage the taxes were in place by the time the taxes went live in April 2015. It cost £5.5 million to implement the devolved taxes. This is £1.2 million more than originally estimated in the Revenue Scotland and Tax Powers Bill in December 2013. The increase was due mainly to the need for additional staff to provide the skills and support required to deliver the project within the time available. Revenue Scotland has established arrangements for making sure taxpayers pay the right amount of tax, but it's too early yet to assess their effectiveness. Revenue Scotland is monitoring the amount of additional tax it recovers through its compliance activities, and it will report that annually as part of its public performance reporting. More generally, Revenue Scotland is refining its systems and processes, taking account of its experience in setting up and administering the first two devolved taxes. It has identified lessons learned and is applying them in preparation for further devolved taxes. Secondly, on financial management and reporting, the Scottish Government has made good progress in modifying its arrangements to accommodate the powers in the Scotland Act 2012. Some arrangements, as we know, are still being developed, and that seems reasonable, given the new fiscal framework has yet to be agreed with the UK Government. Once that has been agreed, it is important that the Scottish Government moves quickly to fully develop its financial management and reporting arrangements to underpin this. I have made two recommendations in my report to this effect. Convener, as always, my colleagues and I are happy to answer the committee's questions. It's just the question that I asked you in the previous session. The question is on page 11, Exhibit 3, Revenue Scotland staff in costs have gone up by 1.36 million. I note on the second page, paragraph 25, the following page, you say that the Scottish Government will need to reflect any additional costs and revenue Scotland in its financial planning and budgets. We have this 20 per cent variance over the original estimate here. Are there further costs coming down the line? We are so accustomed to new IT projects and coming in well over budget. Are there any particular risks here, apart from what you have noted? It is important, first of all, for me to emphasise that the costs that we set out in Exhibit 3 are the costs of the project to establish revenue Scotland, so getting its staffing in place, its IT systems, making sure that it was in a position to collect the new taxes when they came into effect on 1 April last year. As you say, they did come in at £1.2 million higher than the estimate included in the legislation originally. Our conclusion is that most of that is exactly because of the evolving understanding of what was required, the shifts made as it became clearer, what people were involved, what the costs of the IT was. However, I will ask Gordon Smaill to give you a bit more detail on that. To setting up costs, but we are actually in new territory now that we are looking at the on-going running costs or the revenue costs, given that it is 20 per cent over budget for setting up, will the actual running costs, the costs of collection this tax in Scotland, be that likely to be greater than estimated? The reason for my caution is because we are clearly in an evolving field here. We have two new taxes up and running. We do not yet know how effective the compliance activities are because we do not have a full year there. It may be that there is a need for more staffing in that area or other areas. We also have the new Scotland bill, which will provide initially two more devolved taxes that will also be collected by revenue Scotland. I will ask Gordon Smaill to talk you through the way those two sets of costs are related with that caveat, that there is still a good deal of uncertainty about the longer term costs. Thank you. It is important to differentiate between the set-up costs and the on-going running costs, as well as the question that you raised. On the set-up costs, which you focus on, we highlighted in Exhibit 3, that led to that overall £1.2 million and was originally anticipated. It is one of those situations when the legislation was being brought forward and financial memorandum were brought forward at that time. It is only over a period of time after that that the requirements in terms of staff needs and IT needs, the two major elements of the spend, became clearer. As we say in the report, the staff costs, which is the major element that is over the original estimate in the financial memorandum, were just about getting that understanding of what staff were needed, the additional staff needed to make sure that the programme was brought in properly and on time. I think that covers that element of our report. It is as well pointed out just when we were looking at the IT costs that were slightly less than was originally planned in the financial memorandum. That gives us some sense of the work that was being done to understand the actual implications of that, which, of course, was a new area for everybody. On the on-going costs, we need to be cautious about what that might look like in the future with additional devolved taxes coming down the line in other responsibilities. Indeed, as Revenue Scotland understands more about its operational role in things such as compliance, identifying tax gaps and all the things that go along with that in terms of dealing with members of the public of the inquiries that are coming through, we know already on the LBTT. In short, it is about understanding the business. Our report sets out that Revenue Scotland has done well to understand its business and its staff requirements and is progressing in that way. There is some uncertainty that we need to reflect as we run in the report. I would not say that 20 per cent of our budget is doing too well. That was in relation, of course, to the plans back at the time. We are setting up, I appreciate that. At which time? I think that we have allotted Scotland's been before committees before talking about financial memorandum and just how accurate they can be or not. I think that the point here is that this was new territory for everybody. Yes, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Can I just move on? We are so busy talking about the Scottish rate of income tax, but I wonder if I could look at paragraph 67 onwards. The Scottish Government is developing a process to manage its capital borrowing powers. This is little talked about, but the additional borrowing powers, in my humble opinion, are quite significant—£2.2 billion. Can you give us some update on that? This was included in the Scotland Act 2012. It took effect on 1 April last year. I am not on the finance committee, so if you will forgive me, I am kind of new to this. Is this £2.2 billion available for drawing down at this point in time? Has it been drawn down? I wonder if you can just give me a bit of clarity and an update on where we are with the significant new borrowing powers in Scotland. Just to confirm, I apologise. It is £2.2 billion every year. Is that the case? It is an additional £2.2 billion. Mark is saying, you can understand, but I am looking for clarity here. I am going to ask Mark to talk you through the details, because it is important that we get those clear in this committee. The questions that you are asking, Mr Scanlon, are very much why I have made the recommendation that I have done in this report about the importance of the Scottish Government setting out its strategy for capital borrowing and the way in which decisions will be made. Those are significant new powers and have long-term consequences, and it is important that it is clear to the Parliament and people more widely how the powers are being used. It is just on that point that it has been in place for almost a year, so should more clarity around those powers not have been meant as an MSP—I should have known about them—are you saying that the clarity around the £2.2 billion should perhaps have been in place on 1 April when those new powers were implemented? The Scottish Government has included its plans for using the borrowing powers in the budget proposal since the powers came into place. My recommendation is very much more about the framework under the updated fiscal framework and the way in which decisions are taken so that the Parliament is clear about the choices being made and the consequences. Mark can give you more on that. The £2.2 billion is an aggregate limit that applies boring over a number of years. There is a separate limit that is identified, which is an annual limit, which is a percentage of the capital dell budget, and it equated broadly in 2015-16 to £306 million and slightly above that in the current draft budget. Around £300 plus million each year, aggregating up over time to a total of £2.2 billion debt at any one time. On the points around should there be more clarity, as the Auditor General says, there is reference to this in the budget and we think that that can be improved through time that we have reported on that separately around our work on developing financial reporting. Fundamentally important here is clarity about what the Scottish Government's plans for using its borrowing powers are over a longer period and over a strategic period. Thinking ahead, what we recognise as well discussions about the fiscal framework are on-going, it is difficult to tie that down for them to conclude on that, but what we said in the report is that, as soon as that is available, it is really urgent that the Scottish Government can articulate what its strategy is and how it uses its current powers alongside what might be coming down the line. We could expect that in the forthcoming Scottish budget, which I think is due about mid-February. As Mark has said, it depends on progress with the fiscal framework. I think that the fiscal framework is what is required to be clear about the strategy for using the borrowing powers, but it is now an urgent matter that all of this comes together as a coherent package. It is nice to be able to note that this has been such a success and the Auditor General comments that the Scottish Government has established effective structures for managing the implementation of the devolved taxes and Revenue Scotland put effective arrangements in place to identify, respond and manage issues. It is good to see a project that has been well managed in that way. I am just looking at paragraph 66, where we are talking about the Scottish Government having a limited cash reserve of 125 million. I just want to check that that is in terms of a windfall income coming from tax, as opposed to, for example, if the Scottish Government had decided to put taxes up. Presumably that would be a planned tax increase that would not fall under that limit. Your question is highlighting the complexity of the new powers that are coming into being and are part of the reason why I am pushing hard for the financial reporting to be developed, so we will have a clear picture of that. I will ask Mark to talk to you through how it works in practice. Essentially, the ability to have a reserve, where there is more tax collected than was originally forecast and budgeted, the Scottish Government can decide to pay some of that into reserve. When, in future years, if there were to be less tax collected than forecast, it would be able to draw on that reserve to make up the difference. However, the way in which the reserve currently operates is that there are strict rules around what can be paid in and drawn out from the reserve, which are related to the variation between what was forecast in terms of devolved taxes and what the actual tax take was. It is windfall tax that we are talking about here, not budgeted. I describe it more as a smoothing mechanism that, as Mark said, if the Scottish rate of income tax raises more than was expected, the Scottish Government clearly can choose to spend that in whatever way it wishes to. Equally, it can have a small cash reserve, in which it plans to carry forward to future years if it thinks that tax receipts in this year may have been higher than normal for a particular reason. It is a smoothing mechanism between years, reflecting the fact that the Scottish Government's finances are still closely linked to the UK-wide finances. In simple terms, £125 million is really optional. The choice to use it absolutely is optional, that is right. Looking at page 12, paragraph 26, it says here that the UK Government will transfer any cost saved by HMRC from not operating the stampede land tax or landfill tax in Scotland to the Scottish Government. It says here £0.3 million. Is that for a full year, £0.3 million? It does not seem very much. It is for the full year and it is not very much, clearly. It reflects the fact that, in the same way that the income tax system is a UK-wide system, the former system for collecting stamp duty was a UK-wide system and the savings from Scottish transactions not going through that system, but instead going through the new revenue Scotland system, our small savings are at the margin. Still in the same paragraph, the cost associated with the devolution of stamp duty, land tax and so on, they estimate it cost £1 million. That is not on-going though, is it? That is one-off. That is the cost of switching off the system that was previously used to collect stamp duty UK-wide for the transactions relating to Scotland. £1 million to switch it off? It came in at £0.73 million, I think, but yes. I wonder if I can return to a theme that I have pursued before, because it is very easy for us to talk about cash coming in and cash going out. That is mostly what you ordered, of course. Capital borrowing gives an opportunity for long-term capital investment, as we have already talked about. In any business, one would worry about a balance sheet and worry about valuation of those assets and depreciation and all the other things that financial accountants are well familiar with. Are we any nearer to having a balance sheet in Scotland, please, in such a way that we can understand how these things are really changing over time? I absolutely share your view that having a balance sheet for Scotland is now very important, given the new financial powers. I have recommended that in reports over the last two or three years. The committee might recall that, when you took evidence from the permanent secretary on my section 22 report on the Scottish Government's consolidated accounts, you asked the same question. The permanent secretary made a commitment to bring forward proposals early in 2016. We have not yet seen those proposals, but I share your view that it is a very important matter, and I will continue to keep pushing forward as I have in this report. Thank you. That is a very positive response in the sense that it suggests that you do believe that this really is going to happen. As I say, the permanent secretary made a commitment to this committee in November or December of 2015 very positively to bring forward proposals early in 2016. We will work with the clerks to ensure that the committee follows that up in my future reporting on this matter. There is obviously a lot going on in this area within Government and more widely, but I think that that is a very important component of making the new powers work effectively for the long term. I would recommend to the auditor general and the colleagues who have come on to the evidence and the devolution for the powers committee, because that particular issue has come up in evidence. I refer you to have a look at that. I do not have any further questions from colleagues, so, as agreed, we will now move into private session.