What does a Scottish charity have to submit to OSCR each year?

England and Wales: not applicable — this step is Scotland-only; see Step 7, Complete the annual return. Scotland: researched. Northern Ireland: not applicable — see Step 9, Complete the CCNI annual monitoring return.

Everything, every year, from zero

Scotland has no income floor for annual reporting. Not a low one — none. The s.44 duty applies to every charity on the Scottish Charity Register without any income qualification, so a dormant charity that received nothing all year still files a full set.

If you have read English guidance and are looking for the figure below which you can stop, there isn’t one. Any threshold you have seen belongs to a different jurisdiction.

What you submit

• The online annual return
• The statement of account
• The trustees’ annual report
• The independent report on the accounts, where one is required

Since 5 March 2026 the independent report has been a document in its own right rather than something bundled into the accounts — s.44(1)(ca) of the 2005 Act, inserted by the 2023 Act. Treat it as a separate deliverable when you are chasing your examiner.

The deadline

9 months from the end of your financial year, under reg 5 of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006. A month tighter than England and Wales, which matters if you are registered in both — the Scottish date is the one that governs your working calendar.

The sanction has no English equivalent

If a Scottish charity fails to send its statement of account to OSCR by the due date, OSCR can appoint a suitably qualified person to prepare it, and the charity trustees are personally, jointly and severally liable for the cost — Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, s.45(2) and (4).

That is a materially different kind of exposure from anything in England and Wales, where a late filing damages your register entry and your standing but does not by itself reach into a trustee’s own bank account. It is the single most important thing a Scottish trustee should know about this step.

How the form is built

Three sections: charity details, financial position, and selecting the charity’s legal form. Expandable blocks in the financial section give guidance question by question.

What we are not going to give you is a walkthrough of every question, and the reason is worth stating: there is no single question set. The form branches by legal form and by other circumstances, so the questions you see are not the questions another charity sees. Any list purporting to be “the OSCR annual return questions” has been written by someone who saw one charity’s version of the form.

There is a second complication. OSCR has revised some questions, and two versions of the guidance are live at once — which one applies depends on whether your financial year ends before or after 30 June 2025. Check which version you are reading before you rely on it.

Common mistake: assuming an income floor exists

Every other UK jurisdiction has one. Scotland has none. A dormant Scottish charity with zero income still files everything, every year.