Scottish higher tax rate threshold

[Srit]

Her name changed for this, just pondering the facts rather than the politics.

One of the measure apparently being considered by new WM government is to raise the threshold at which higher income tax applies from just over 50k to 80k, in Scotland that threshold is 43.6k plus of course the higher rate of tax.

Anyone know what powers the SG have regarding the threshold? I believe there's a limit to how much the rate can be changed, but can't find anything out about the thresholds.

This works in principle until you get more expensive parts of the country regardless.
Aberdeenshire isn't cheap for instance but many towns aren't rich either. Same goes for the Islands where house property is at a premium so prices are massively inflated regardless of the income of the local communities.

It almost needs a assessment per authority so it's in tune with that current area.

@Swingsarefun you think free/ reduced dental
fees and free prescriptions are gimmicks? Really? You obviously have a shit load of money and no long term health conditions that require substantial medications
for. Off you pop down to England to live then.

Typical Nat response. Not allowed to have a debate about stuff without people being told to go to England.

There isn't any other way to deal with people with long term health conditions other than free prescriptions for all?

Or to provide for new babies in poverty without baby boxes being claimed by people who can afford to clothe their own baby?

The Scottish Government seem to have so many freebies that they can no longer pay for basic things like public sector pay rises. I’d just rather we pay NHS dentistry and prescriptions like we used to. The dentistry in particular was less than the cost of a hair cut. And those on benefits, the elderly and kids were free anyway.

Free dental care? We were never able to access free care in Scotland and had to pay for private (albeit excellent) treatment. DMum had a free NHS dentist - her annual check up, scale and polish appts were 10 minutes long, and she hasn't been able to access her dentist since pre COVID. Her teeth are falling out at a rate of knots.

Free university education isn't free, it's funded, and many universities are struggling with the amount they're receiving from shefc, consequently having to recruit more overseas students because they get more money that way.

RJNomore1 Yesterdays bombshell about frozen rent is a classic example. I’m on a HA board; as a sector it means we can’t consult on a rent increase in spring; if it’s extended it will put some out of business and reduce service levels in the others, and you can forget green retrofitting which is practically unaffordable at the best of times. Meanwhile for private landlords of mortgage rates go up and they default, what happens to tenants when banks repossess? Saying that the SG hate the housing association movement anyway. For some unknown reason.

Another big problem is that landlords can no longer insist on a minimum tenancy length, and tenants can leave by giving only 1 months' notice.

There are hidden implications of the latest legislative micro-interference in the beleaguered housing sector.

Given that we live in a time of redundancies when employees are expected to be mobile, anyone who in the large and poorly connected country that is Scotland who wants to live near their work during the week while retaining their family home and who could previously rent a spare room as a lodger in someone's home, will be caught out by the Short Term Lettings legislation.

Any residence which is not the main or principle residence of a tenant or lodger must be licensed as a short term let (holiday let).
Many landlords simply won't bother with this and will leave their spare rooms empty, as the costs of licensing simply won't add up.

Anyone moving temporarily for a short term contract or a placement will have to register for council tax in the room they rent for this and pay double for their family home, if they have a main home elsewhere.

I often think that Scotland is lurching from one green/socialist idea thats never properly debated in its unicameral parliament to another. All of these constant changes create market uncertainty and that is really bad for the economy. It discourages investment. When people are actually starting to talk about moving away due to high taxes, thats a real problem for a country, especially a small one like Scotland.

Road charging is going to be introduced soon too, so if you work in one of the professional/office type jobs that can typically only be done in city centres, you will be asked to pay £2 extra per day for the privilege of just going to work, if you have to drive there.

I think so too, I see a lot of complaints on here but I have an NHS dentist, a GP where I can generally get an appointment within a day or two and when I was ill last year during covid times I was hospitalised had lumbar puncture/ mri/ ct scan and lots of tests to get to the bottom of it.

But if they want to pay or go to England that’s open to them. Free education, dentists and prescriptions definitely aren’t a gimmick. And no one is going to their dr to get free paracetamol. It costs about 20p for a box in the supermarket.

I would expect that with all the cuts in public services and continually increasing taxes to see by now the basics being done really well. But compared to modern European countries, we have terrible infrastructure. In some places, there are barely pavements. There is regularly someone killed trying to cross the Edinburgh bypass on foot - there are barely any bridges and no underpasses. The Edinburgh bypass itself must have set some record for the number of consultancies on replacing the Sheriffhall roundabout yet it is still a traffic block between east and west at almost any time of day or night.

Its damned expensive to live here and its increasingly depressing because we get so little of the basic stuff for all of our tax. Being told that its a socialist utopia is fairly grating because if this is utopia, I think I'd rather go back to the higher standard of basic.

I think that prescriptions should be free and on the basis of need. Otherwise there’s always the danger that lots of people fall through the net - I previously lived in England and you really need quite a low income to get free prescriptions. I would rather we collected money from general taxation than people had to go without essential medicine.

if you can afford prescription charges and are keen to pay, why don’t you donate some time to the NHs or some money to an nhs charity rather than try to deny prescriptions to others. It’s a popular policy for a reason. And dentists aren’t free so don’t know what mean. There is much much better availability of nhs dental care in Scotland than ruk.

Absolutely. Free tuition is a huge benefit that I’m so grateful is available for my dds. There are lots of places available on courses in Scotland. Ultimately though if you want to pay to go to university, there are lots of options. You can take a student loan and go study in England if you choose and pay tuition.

i personally think it’s disgraceful that ruk charges so much in fees for university. English fees are some of the highest in the world for public universities. Even state universities in the USA are cheaper generally. We should not be burdening young people with so much debt. It’s out of step with Europe and the rest of the world.

Thé link doesn’t say what you said it does (that Scottish students losing places to ruk students). It says there has been an increase in Scottish students being rejected.

i dont agrée that we should charge for education and particularly not charge over £9000. Education is a benefit to society as well as the student themselves and it’s reasonable for there to be free (but not unlimited) education. I have no problem paying taxes for that. I got a free education and don’t agree with denying it to the younger generation.

@StatisticallyChallenged thanks,really enjoying reading your comments.

@midgetastic in addition to the % of high rate tax payers increasing significantly in Scotland, it is worth remembering that the figures wont include salary sacrificed salaries so the % of people earning in the high rate will be greater than the % eg. I am in scotland, i earn £50k. I salary sacrifice my salary into various chanels but mainly my pension, so it comes in at £42k and i dont pay any high rate tax. If the threshold was £51k, id pay far less into my pension and the scot gov would bring in more income tax. My DH earns around £75-80k he also pays thousands into his pension to save paying the tax.

Id imagine loads of people do they same.

If England put its HR IT threshold up to £80k and Scotland stayed as is, we would need to seriously consider moving or buying a cheap flat somewhere and living there part time for tax purposes.

Another thing to note is that the cost of living is quite a bit less in Scotland. House prices in particular

How can access to free dental care and prescriptions be gimmicks? These are life changing for some people. Personally I'm glad we don't say to people 'oh sorry you're too poor to get your teeth looked at or that medicine you need.'

Personally I am about £50 a month better off living in Scotland and I think that's bloody good value considering the services we have access too.

School dinners, prescriptions, dental treatment, university tuition...I have no idea how I'd afford these things and very grateful they're provided for us. I'd be happy to pay a bit more tax to cover it.
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just wanted to say, I’m in Scotland and a lot of folk who work that aren’t entitled to benefits, maybe on the threshold. Have to walk about with rotten teeth as they can’t afford to go to the dentist. I’m thinking of giving up my job to get all these wonderful benefits that folk seem to get !

I get a little fed up with people thinking this. Rural rents and houses are not cheaper. I've been comparing recently - nice areas in England that I know with easier/better access to good shops/schools/bigger variety of jobs/public transport and the rents are cheaper or the same. House prices similar.
Scotland has historically always been the most expensive place for heating oil in the UK. Don't know about right now. Standing charges I believe are more expensive in Scotland - not sure about the actual unit rate
Depending where you are postage ,fuel and food can be more expensive. My hobby - parts if it are significantly more expensive up here.
Some of it understandable as less people therefore less demand and competition.

I just spoke to someone who has moved to Scotland from England in the last 6 months and they said (completely unprompted) they were shocked about how expensive it was.

I think a lot of people when thinking about relative cost of living compare Scotland to South East England, and perhaps don't realise that for much of England (particularly the North) living costs are no higher, and in some cases lower. I also find that a lot of the freebies are technically available but practically not so much. Take free dental care for instance - in practice the waiting lists are so long that you end up going private anyway (increasingly the case for other health issues too...)

We did some rough calculations yesterday and I'll be a couple of hundred pounds worse off and DH a whopping £1900 worse off in tax for the privilege of living in Scotland as opposed to elsewhere in the UK. We wouldn't mind so much if we felt that public services were good but they're absolutely diabolically bad round here (Health and transport particularly) and I suspect the extra money will disappear into legal fees to defend dodgy legislation, another questionable business deal, or maybe into overseas embassies that we don't need as the UK already has them.

Absolutely. For a hospital doctor, deciding whether to work in Edinburgh or Newcastle, it’s a no brainer. Houses are cheaper in Northumberland, and over a working lifetime a married pair of consultants would save £200,000 in tax by staying in England.
We already can’t recruit consultants to Scotland - some posts have been vacant for over a year. This punitive tax hike will make it worse.

@MsPincher We are going without essential medicine. My O/H and I are both on long long waiting lists for something impacting our work. Both getting worse and my GP has said to me they can't do anything more for me and I need to see a consultant now.
My O/H has free repeat prescriptions and we would to prefer to be paying for them something per month rather than the money we lose from our income when we cant work as a result of untreated illness flare ups. I've lost £1500 in wages and it will just get worse. O/H probably lost more. if we end up not working that's less money for "free" prescriptions

"Free" prescriptions takes money away from the NHS and the SNP themselves are talking about charging people now for NHS access and of course they won't reverse "free" prescriptions as that is one of their bribes.

It's a value for money issue. Another here who isn't necessarily against paying more tax if I could see the value to the communities of paying that. The council tax freeze used to do my head in. In our council, raising it by £10 a year would have brought in nearly an extra half million which I appreciate in budget terms isn't much, but they were scrapping community services that cost less than that a year to run. Services that made a difference to peoples lives, gone.

It’s the recognition of the marginal tax rate of 54% above 43% that’s insane. That’s a regressive not progressive system. I could cope with paying an extra 2p in the pound compared to England but being subject to 12% ni compared to 2% is just not on.

I don’t know why people think it’s cheaper to live in Scotland? We earn less because of the tax thresholds, council tax is high and where I live house prices are quite mad. The offers over system means you need a huge chunk of capital.

I just can’t believe we live in a country where 43k is seen as the highest earning in society? Teachers will be in this bracket with any pay rise (which will now be taken back quickly) and will mean experienced teachers marking for the sqa will be few and far between- being taxed on top rate immediately.

This isn’t progressive at all. Where is the drive to make more and earn more.

Before free prescriptions there was a working system in place allowing people requiring repeat prescriptions to pay a set fee and that was manageable.

before ‘free’ university education I took out a SAAS loan and managed fine, I’m still paying it back now.

Before ‘free’ baby boxes, which are given for every single baby, regardless of siblings (terrible for the planet) people managed to go to specifically created and linked charities.

Before ‘free’ bus travel for teens, we managed on the reduced fair.

And here are the government deeming a standard profession is now the top rung of society. I find it truly baffling. The desire to be a Nordic company with non of the fiscal, long term, we’ll though out initiatives and back ups in place.

I'm not a higher rate tax payer but DH is. We don't mind paying a bit more in tax to fund decent public services for all but I don't trust the Gov to spend it solely on improved nhs funding and not to piss it away on court cases and ferries! Over £200m overspend on ferries when the nhs is in such dire straits

In defence of the extra tax (which would effect me but like a PP I salary sacrifice into my pension) our nurses are not striking because the Scottish Government brokered a deal with them. I will pay more tax for a functioning NHS.

Scottish nurses voted and were due to strike it was only the set date of action which changed this and took them back to the table to agree 7.5% increase. The previous increase was much lower!