Mail Online

Cut the tax burden

HIGH taxes are at the centre of the SNP’s failing economic plans – serving only to hobble growth.

The cross-Border tax gap means living north of the Border carries a penalty in the form of more punitive rates.

Now a respected economic think-tank warns of a possible mass exodus of professionals if that gulf were to widen.

Both contenders for the Tory leadership back tax cuts, even if they disagree on when they should happen.

In Scotland, there is no such political consensus – and if tax were to be reduced south of the Border, would the SNP follow suit? The prospect of an electoral backlash might concentrate minds, but consider the party’s past record.

It talks in grand terms about cutting the size of the state – even as the benefits bill rises by 50 per cent to £6billion a year.

Higher-rate taxpayers – a category that includes nurses, teachers and police officers – are branded ‘rich’, and therefore legitimate targets for supposedly ‘progressive’ tax grabs.

Indeed, everyone earning more than £27,850 in Scotland faces paying more income tax than people living in other parts of the UK.

Experts say that a 1p cut to the basic rate of income tax – planned for 2024 by the UK Government – would lead to a £420million funding boost to the SNP.

Yet, astonishingly, Nationalist ministers have already made an assumption in their spending review that they will not duplicate the move.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission, the Scottish Government’s economic forecaster, hasn’t bothered to assess the ‘behavioural impact’ of a growing tax gap.

But the repercussions are likely to be profound – and would inflict irrevocable damage just as the country begins to recover from the trauma of the pandemic.

Ministers should heed the economists’ warnings – and cut the tax burden on hardworking Scots.

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2022-08-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://mailonline.pressreader.com/article/281878712156713

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