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.

Many posters are missing the point that certain income bands are subject to regressive rather than progressive tax. For example yes someone on 49000 will only pay another £60ish pound a year, not do much. But because they still have to pay national insurance at 12% they are paying a total of now 54% marginal tax on their income between 43600 and 50000. Do people seriously think this is fair?

Agree.
An extra penny won't break the bank for people earning at that level.
It's needed, these are tough times.
Who on earth is going to make the move down south for the sake of a few hundred quid a year. What nonsense.
For the better weather, yes maybe! But not for a few hundred quid a year.

It's a very low salary point to raise income tax.

Personally I think it's fine. Though if I were hit I'd try to off-shore if it was possible.

Agree entirely.

Waiting for the inevitable posts from those saying they will be fleeing over the border in droves.

My husband is a Paramedic with the Scottish ambulance service and is hugely worse off because of it. He barely earns the higher cap and certainly can no longer 'afford' to work overtime. It's not worth it yet they're short staffed hugely. Paying our bills is, like many, getting harder and harder. This doesn't help find the NHS. It's disastrous.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-snps-tax-hikes-wont-work/

The tax increases will generate enough extra income to run the NHS in Scotland for 48hours.
Apparently there aren’t enough rich people in the country.

But it doesn't have to pay for the whole NHS, that's already part of the government's spending. It's an extra £95m (based on the article you linked) on top of the existing budget - however you look at it, that's a lot of nurses, hospital equipment, beds, cleaners, GP appointments, whatever....

Totally agree with posters saying they don't trust the SNP on spending, but I also think they are a million times better than what the Tories are doing with UK money so I'll take my chances here with the higher tax!

57 % of people in Scotland pay tax .. only 16 % pay the higher or top rate of tax. In other words , as you say. there aren’t enough ‘rich ‘ in Scotland to squeeze.

All very well putting in money .. fantastic , but it will take a long time to train extra doctors and nurses… don’t forget that Nicola Sturgeon cut the nurses ‘ training places when she was Health Minister . Now we are paying the price .

Training places for nurses were cut by a fifth when Nicola Sturgeon was Health Secretary around 2012. She was criticised for failing to plan properly for the future. The impact of these decisions is being felt now.

The extra money raised in taxation will mostly be wasted. The SNP have just pledged a further £72million to the failing Ferguson shipyard to finish those ridiculous two ferries that have now cost Scots taxpayers over £350 million!

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

This is the most ironic statement I've ever read 😄 My experience is the exact opposite; Indy voters are Yes At All Costs and don't care what the fallout is. They cannot be reasoned with. They do not see sense. There is no departing from the mantra.

my husband and I are higher / top rate taxpayers and wouldn’t mind paying the tax if the snp didn’t waste so much money.

they spend £2k per head more on public services than the rest of the UK and yet we have schools that are failing so badly the Scottish government withdrew from the international education ranking tables as it was getting too embarrassing. we moved our kids private for secondary and the maths teacher in particular said that by secondary school those that had attended state primary were on average 2 years behind their private primary contemporaries. Just diabolical.

And as others have already said, the number of university places offered to schooling kids is extremely limited due to them being ‘free’. Scottish unis get £2k for every Scottish student place, £9k for every English and the sky’s the limit for overseas students. With costs increasing and fees not, unis are increasingly turning to overseas students to survive.

I would most definitely move if I was subjected to this tax. But I suppose governments already estimate how many people will move vs stay to implement these taxes. If I got great services and everything worked I would agree to higher taxes. I live in England so if they went up for me I'd just leave. And no doubt people will be moving just south of the border in Scotland to avoid these taxes.
Be interesting to see what happens I suppose.

Tbh this is another incentive to drop to 3 or 4 days a week when earnings get to that 43k a year point. The responsibility and stress of higher responsibility roles getting crushed by tax increases when working full-time= not worth it and colleagues have already been opting out increasingly as a result. This impacts our service users massively - we can't force people to work full-time if they don't want/need to

We already struggle with senior "doers" dropping out of full-time work, how is this 54% marginal tax situation going to help it?!

The other thing that people will do is move to self employment where possible, then pay themselves just below the threshold and the rest in dividends.

We will put more into our pensions and pay no more tax
The 54% marginal rate is indefensible

The Scottish government’s management of the economy is shameful,why should I pay for that

This (also a higher rate tax payer but only just).

It's always easy when it's someone else paying. At this rate I'm better off moving to France.

It’s easy to say good riddance but who will work the empty jobs? And how would the tax takings shortfall be made up? A lot of people will stay and increase their private pension contributions or drop their hours, this would also reduce tax takings.

Lower earners always says things like this. They seem to think that anyone on £40k is rich and so should do their long hours all to pay lots of tax so it can be thrown around in benefits for the lovely, honest, downtrodden "poor" people.

House prices are generally cheaper in Scotland than England so what people save in tax, they probably pay for elsewhere.

DH and I will both be affected by the change in tax, not in the highest tax bracket (by a fair bit atm) but we do have a good salary with decent bonus as well as rental income and we're happy to pay more if it goes to the right places.

If you’re going to say good riddance to people as in pp, And focusing on those who do pay higher tax seems unwise.

This. I’m in a similar situation- it’s hard for single mums as if we earn at this level we don’t get help with childcare costs either. So these tax rises will be a significant chunk of the budget of Scottish women in this situation who are often already struggling.

I would like to see a lot more help and understanding given to single mums- the child benefit trap is a similar issue. We are being kept in poverty by policy made for two parent families.