Finance Secretary Derek Mackay is facing calls to bring forward the next business rates revaluation to ensure firms are not hit again by “bombshell” rises.
Aberdeen South MP Ross Thomson and north-east MSP Bill Bowman said Holyrood ministers should follow the lead of Westminster and carry out the next assessment in 2021.
Huge rises in rateable values last year left many north and north-east businesses facing crippling bills.
The call for an earlier revaluation from the Scottish Conservatives follows a ruling at the Court of Session this month in which judges backed the Grampian Assessor’s view that the oil downturn did not represent a “material change of circumstances” affecting property values.
Mr Thomson said: “The chancellor’s announcement in the Spring Statement to bring forward the next revaluation in England from 2022 to 2021 has been broadly welcomed.
“A shorter valuation period should help to avoid the kind of massive changes in bills that companies experienced last year.
“If the system had been more responsive to the changes in the local economy, there may not have been such enormous, sudden increases.
“There is still work to be done to reform the business rates system.
“However, one step in the right direction for the finance secretary would be to follow the lead of the chancellor and bring forward the next revaluation in Scotland.
“That would go some way to avoiding the bombshell situation that companies across the north-east were faced with when the 2017 bills landed.”
Mr Mason added that it would be “stubborn foolishness” not to bring the revaluation in line with the rest of the UK.
However, a Scottish Government spokesman said a new timetable had already been agreed.
“The Scottish Government has already confirmed it will move to three yearly revaluations from 2022, and remains committed to maintaining a competitive non-domestic rates regime for businesses in Scotland,” he said.
“We provide the most competitive rates relief in the UK, worth around £720million, including the targeted measures for businesses in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, and the Small Business Bonus Scheme, which alone lifts 100,000 properties out of rates altogether.
“Under the Community Empowerment Act 2015 councils have the flexibility to create their own local rate relief schemes, should they choose to do so.”
