Two-thirds of respondents to a major consultation have backed revaluing Scottish homes for council tax as the country considers the biggest overhaul of the system in decades.
A new 14-band system based on updated property values also emerged as the most popular of the specific options put forward during a Scottish Government and COSLA consultation.
Council tax in Scotland is currently divided into eight bands from A to H, with homes still placed into them according to what they were worth – or would have been worth – in April 1991.
The Scottish Government has been examining whether to revalue properties and fundamentally redesign the bands as part of work on the future of the tax.
An independent analysis of the consultation, published on Friday (11 September), found 82% of respondents supported reforming the current council tax system.
Some 67% supported revaluing properties to reflect current market values.
Support for revaluation was particularly strong among organisations, with 91% in favour, compared with 66% of individual respondents.
The Scottish Government also held five public engagement events in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Inverness, Edinburgh and online.
Participants consistently described the existing arrangements as out of date and unfair.
One of the biggest questions is what a replacement system could look like.
Respondents were offered five potential systems, ranging from simply revaluing properties while retaining the existing eight bands to introducing 12 or 14 bands.
The most popular was a revalued 14-band system, backed by 38% of people and organisations answering the question.
It received 463 votes from the 1,222 respondents who answered that part of the consultation.
The 14-band option was the most popular choice among both individual respondents and organisations.
Support was particularly strong among people currently living in lower-band properties.
Some 47% of respondents living in Band A to D properties favoured the 14-band system, compared with 30% of those in Bands E to H.
The existing council tax system without any revaluation proved the least popular option.
Some 41% selected retaining the current arrangements as their least preferred choice, rising to 83% among organisations.
Revaluation could result in significant changes to individual household bills because property prices have not risen evenly across Scotland since 1991.
Homes which were relatively inexpensive 35 years ago may now be considerably more valuable compared with properties elsewhere in the country.
The reverse could apply in areas where property values have risen more slowly.
That means two homes currently paying similar council tax bills could potentially move into different bands following a revaluation based on modern prices.
Exactly who would pay more or less would depend on the final design of the system, new property-value thresholds and the relative charges applied to each band.
There was also no clear consensus over whether band thresholds should be identical across Scotland or vary locally.
Some 48% favoured thresholds being set locally while 45% supported a national system. Organisations were more strongly in favour of national thresholds, with 68% supporting that approach.
There was clearer support for protecting households from sudden increases in their bills.
Some 79% backed creating a transitional relief scheme which would limit the amount a household’s council tax could rise each year as a direct result of reform.
Respondents were presented with several possible forms of protection.
The most popular would limit annual reform-related increases to the lower of 10% or £300 for four years.
There was also support for expanding the existing Council Tax Reduction scheme to protect households on lower incomes.
The consultation exposed concerns about relying on property values at all.
Some respondents argued the value of someone’s home did not necessarily reflect their income or ability to pay, particularly for pensioners and other people who may own valuable properties but have relatively modest incomes.
Alternative suggestions included a local income tax, land value tax and proportional property tax.
Others argued that the existing system has become increasingly unfair precisely because it relies on property valuations which are more than three decades old.
Among individual respondents, 37% lived in properties in Bands A to D and 55% were in Bands E to H.
The findings will now feed into the continuing debate over how council tax should be reformed.
Any decision to revalue Scotland’s homes would be a major undertaking and could create significant changes in bills between different types of properties and different parts of the country.
The current system has been in place since council tax was introduced in 1993.