To think that the Scottish government have made the right decision to increase tax for higher earners

[ChristmasCaroline]

Ok, no one wants to pay extra tax. But it’s needed to fund the NHS.

at least it’s higher earners being hit.

It works out as a marginal rate of 54%. That's high for someone only on £45k.

I agree however i think the threshold is too low as I earn 46k working for the NHS but am a lone parent so it'll have an impact on me more than a couple with dual income.

Typical of the SNP…..good ideas in principal but they lack any awareness, experience and sometimes I fear intelligence to be able to execute them effectively/sensibly.

The threshold is ridiculous, yaaayyyy let’s make a load of people who are just about comfortable most definitely not. Yippeee. Why can’t we just tax the actual wealthy/rich more.

and agree with @KnittedCardi wholeheartedly….and refer people back to above in terms of being he SNP’s lack of knowledge/experience. Or if I were to really play devils advocate I could say it’s not about the NHS it’s about kicking people back down and a dismantling of the middle class.

I'm a higher earner and I applaud this decision. I appreciate it'll impact different people in different ways but it's just the right thing to do. We live in a society and we need to watch out for others. I know people who are outraged. They're the ones with a huge house, 2 Landrovers, luxury holidays...they can just do one. Selfish.

Someone earning £50k is going toe paying an extra £63 a year tax.
Someone on £200k will be paying an extra £3k
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-63991541

Not exactly sums that's would make you uproot your whole life and move to England. I'm not an SNP fan by any means, and I am a higher tax payer - but I'm happy to pay a bit more tax to stay in a country without nurses strikes, shorter A&E waits, with free prescriptions and eye tests, free elderly care, lower tuition fees etc etc. Benefit of those things are worth more than the extra tax I pay.

This is the whole crux of the situation.
The SG cannot be trusted. It is not open nor honest with what it does with our money.
Once the kids are through uni we’ll be off. There is a massive shortage of professionals in my field and jobs aplenty south of the border. But don’t worry, as someone said upthread there are load of people to fill the gaps left behind. 🙄

And I mean the benefit to society, not me personally!

I’d be happy to stay if SG were doing a good job, but it’s so very bad.

Does everyone realise when the SNP say they pay for university tuition fees they give a measly 2k per place- doesn't actually cover the fees and therefore causes a shortage of places for Scottish students because the unis can't afford to offer huge % of places to them.
Also agree with previous posters that free prescriptions should be scrapped.

@Wherediditallgo yes, be sure to get them through uni first, save on the fees, then move. I’m sure Westminster will spend your tax money wisely 😉

Yes this is correct , but surprisingly never mentioned very often in the press . The Scottish Government limits the number of Scottish students because it pays for their tuition and when quotas are filled it will take fee paying students from the rest of the UK. The capping policy prevents some Scottish students from getting places. It is noticeable in Clearing when some Unis state that o
all their Scottish clearing vacancies have been filled but spaces left for paying students. Shocking.

If you look at who pays for prescriptions in England, I very much doubt that the mechanism for administering prescription charges would pay for itself.

Basically U18s, students, people on very low incomes, over 65s, pregnant women and people who have given birth within a year, people who have had cancer within 5 years plus a couple of other long term medical conditions (think it might be diabetes and possibly something heart related). If we added in say Asthma, Thyroid and Epilepsy as long term conditions where people not needing to pay for their ongoing medication would make sense on a cost basis for the NHS (cheaper to prevent than treat) you have VERY few people who would be paying, and they are probably going to have very few prescriptions. Most healthy in work people rarely take more than OTC pain meds sometimes so would be largely unaffected by prescriptions being charged for but obviously not a source of revenue!

If you assume that some people just above the income threshold will just not fill the prescription until payday/at all and will therefore need hospital treatment as a result of not being able to get the prescription on the (say abx for infected cut/chest infection), charging for prescriptions does not seem economically sensible...

Retaining the pharmacy first side of things so parents can get free meds for kids obviously frees up doctor time and is sensible.

Obviously I don't have access to the figures and it's a guess, but I feel like charging for prescriptions is more political than economic if looked at for the Scottish population (demographically and just based on numbers).

They are doing a great job of dumbing down the population. Reduce university places, drop aspirations, dumb down the education system and make more and more people rely on the state. Push the politics of envy, kill off entrepreneurship, heaven help anyone if they actually want to be successful with business, kill off the rental market, massively reduce holiday homes despite being a top tourist destination, not that anyone can get to an island because the ferries are a disaster.
Have a shorter life expectancy, have higher drug and alcohol deaths, have poorer maternal care, give away the rights of women.
Do all of this under a massive veil of secrecy about how money is actually spent.
Compare that with the time when the Scots were world leaders in education, in invention, science and engineering.
We have become a sorry state and it makes it makes me so sad to see.

One went to an English university- places are limited in Scotland.
The other is already at a Scottish one.

If we want the services we have that's the cost of it.
Having experienced the NHS lately I can say it's worth it (and maybe we need to pay more so it doesn't end up like it is in England).

It’s interesting, the posts below re being progressive really sell it all in a different way.

You can do all this and get rid of higher payers but if your voters welcome each middle income tax rise as progressive you’re grand.

Nobody wants to look at it like that. As long as they can say SNP bad and make jibes about Nicola sturgeon then they’ll keep on moaning.

What people need to remember is that people paying the higher tax rates do so only after they exceed thresholds not from the very first £1 made. So earners getting £45 k will only pay the additional 1% on everything over the £43k ish.

And let’s not forget the median pay on Scotland is £26k and I know many many more under that than over it and of the true higher earners not one wants to move away, least of all due to tax rises.

I’m happy to pay more tax as long as it gets put to good use.

If the SNP had made a good job of things then fine, no one would mind a tax increase. We would see it going to good used and see the benefit to those who need it, to our children, to those in poor health, to the elderly etc
But they are terrible stewards of our money. It’s being poured down the drain.

@Wherediditallgo your post reminded me a bit of Renton's soliloquy in Trainspotting, updated for 2022.

The SNP have made a better job of things than their Westminster counterparts, despite being fiscally handicapped by the way devolved governments are administered.

For every example you can give of the SNP pouring money down the drain I can counter with an example of Westminster not just pouring it but shredding, burning, and pissing on it first.

The snp bad brigade posses the most extreme tunnel vision known to human kind.

I am frustrated at yet another grab on higher rate tax payers. We are in Scotland, and now are seriously considering our options. The gap between higher rate payers in England vs Scotland was already frustrating but now its a joke. It feels like we are just an easy cash cow - more tax, ridiculous Council Tax, no child benefit, no help with the cost of living, no CTax rebate as house is band E.....so on and so on. Everyone else seems to be supported and given more and more to help out when we are ALL struggling. It's not encouraging to anyone to be successful in Scotland right now - all we see is everything we've worked hard for being eroded.

It's not a popular view, but I'm beginning to feel like those in the higher rate band are fast becoming the group in society with the least disposable income. Those in the top rate have more, and my tax is paying for those in the lower rates to get support for everything. We just pay for everything that we don't qualify for. It's a kick in the stomach when we've worked our backsides off, been sensible and lived within our means, saved, insured everything we can to ensure we are not a burden on the state, only to have more and more taken.

So, we don't know if we will stay. We'll get DD through her exams and then assess because the reality is that we'd be thousands better off away from Scotland.

Surely £43k is middle income not high income. More Sturgeon crackpot ideas. She put cap on rents and many LL sold up now not enough rentals left for those that want them. Now she is overtaxing middle earners they will just shift across the border. Scotland will lose its good NHS consultants.

I'm a Scottish tax payer and happy to contribute a bit extra. My family has benefited from the SNP govt's more progressive policies including free student tuition and free personal care. And free prescriptions. Compare and contrast with Westminster awarding govt contracts to cronies and no accountability. Scandalous.

My issue with this is the definition of “higher earner”. DH and I are both nurses both with 30 plus years in the NHS. We’ve both done loads of additional training, higher degrees and have basically worked our arses off to get to top band 7 posts - so we fall into higher tax band. I feel like we are getting penalised for working hard. It’s not like we are getting 6 figures plus. We get good salaries but as I say, we’ve both grafted for years to get these.

not all “high earners” have accountants!!

We're not particularly high earners, both professional, total income around 70k most of which is DH. Fine paying the extra tax.

That said we moved up from rural England and Scotland is in a much better state than England. SNP> Tories