Higher taxes incoming on Tueaday

[Choosychoice]

If you earn £100-£125k you currently pay income tax at a marginal rate of 63%. This isn’t enough for the SNP who next Tuesday are increasing it to 65%. 🤯 in what world is this a reasonable thing to do, when money is being wasted left right and centre by these imbeciles on embassies with no political purpose, ferry contracts so bad we pay 10 x the going rate, and a department for constitutional affairs who’s whole purpose is outwith the devolution agreement. We’ve just spent millions trying to get the GRR past section 35 when the case was so weak it took 46 seconds for the judge to throw it out and rUK are (quite rightly) considering asking for the Scottish government to pay their costs.

I don’t mind paying more taxes for the child poverty measures, but raising taxes to allow these fiscally incontinent 5 year olds to waste again and again and again is farcical.

I got a promotion this year and now in that new bracket , we get no benefits , kid did not get university place as all taken up so had to go to England , so we are done , selling up and I will up pension contributions so they get not a penny more from me , they blame Westminster but have pissed away so many millions, totally incompetent, split our country and god forbid they ever get independence.!

I'm economically inactive, as I study with the OU part time. Haven't worked in 16 years raising my family. Will get back to it eventually once youngest reaches age 12/13 probably.

I have relatives on DH's side of the family where one half of the couple is classed as a carer for his severely autistic child (he is now 16 but mentally a toddler and will never have friends or have a family of his own, still in nappies etc). His partner has an online business from home she has had for years, earnings not much as they rely heavily on various benefits. This has been the case since both children were very small. Their eldest is 18 and get EMA as he is still in school (he isn't looking for a job as he is happy with this money he gets for staying on at school).

These are the types of people in Scotland you are helping with your high paying salaries in Scotland. Hope that helps you realise many fall on hard times through no fault of their own. People who are economically inactive don't have a choice in a lot of cases.

I might be wrong but I think a lot of it is to do with the quality of jobs as well. Lots of people on low paid, part time and often unstable work. So not hitting the tax threshold.

And the lack of quality jobs means less people on high earnings too so less of the “broad shoulders” to start with thus everyone on over £28k paying more. Which needs proper economic planning to deal with.

@Vettrianofan id be truly happy if I thought my tax WAS helping families in that sort of situation (or anyone tbh). One in 4 children living in poverty. Over 18 000 homes empty for over a year while around 9.5k children have no home. I could go on and on. But it won’t due the mismanagement and poorly thought out policies explained upthread by others. So I might as well get a nice car, it’s electric so will cut my carbon emissions, and up my pension, less chance of me needing to rely on the state when I’m older.

I note the wellbeing economy funding is being cut on the quiet as well.

The economically inactive thing is interesting. I studied at a Scandinavian university living with a family and there is a totally different work ethic there.

Everyone goes to work (barring those who are severely incapacitated and pensioners). The childcare is there so that the parents can go back to work from when the baby gets to a year or so, and if even if your work is minimum wage you would be expected to work full time and people like doing so as it is giving back to society.

No one is on long term sick for things like depression or waiting for a knee op as they get treated and back to work, as society expects. Immigrants only get their benefits if they go to language school, and when they graduate they have to do work experience then seek work.

income tax starts from the first £ earned and rates are high from the start. But public services are obviously much better because the tax take is massive.

Here we don’t have a societal expectation that everyone younger than pension age should work full time, so people don’t, so tax take is lower and services are worse.

We have just paid the extra tax in the past - even the 67% marginal rate - but won’t now. It’s gone too high. We’ll whack all of our money into our pension instead.

There are many interesting debates to be had on tax and spend - if we’re saying over 40 percent are carers or disabled, that’s an awfully high number….similarly the SNP themselves accept that 1 in 5 working for the public sector is too high.

I'm one of the "economically inactive" by the government definition. I work part time and i'm self employed, have been for about 15 years. Earnings go up and down and I do a tax return. Over the past three years have been doing a Masters and earnings have dipped a bit because of that, and because the services I offer are discretionary spend really and a harder sell than it was a few years ago. This is the first year in the 15 that I have logged in, done my tax return and not owed a single penny, not even Class 2 national Insurance.

Balanced out by DH though who is a higher earner and paying thousands in tax.

According to the numpties on X, anyone moaning and planning to up pension contributions should just fuck off to England.

I'm from a Scandinavian country (born and lived there for 20 years). I agree with some of OP's observations, not quite all though. But that would be a whole separate topic.

What OP's post reminded me of though, is that beyond kids being 3 years, there really is absolutely no "stay at home parent" culture. I never ever knew a kid at school who had a parent permanently home and none of my peers with kids do it now. There's some state support to stay home till kids are 3 but after that everyone returns to work, and there is a strong societal expectation to do so. Likely to be a bit different in more recent communities made of poorly integrated immigrants though.

Anyways, I guess I think maybe governments here need to focus on incentivising the un- and under-employed rather than raising taxes on those working.

One of the best recent tax changes was the scrapping of the line time limit into your pension fund, good job that the Scottish Government can’t mess with that. So previously if you weren’t maxing contributions because of the life time limit you now can. Admittedly there is a cap on the 25% tax free amount but you’ll have more for draw down! If still in Scotland I’ll be sure to drawn down to minimise tax.

I agree with income tax but you have to be careful when setting it that it doesn't discentivise promotion and increased responsibility when you are targetting the kinds of salaries people get paid in higher managerial and professional or other skilled jobs.

I'm in a position where I might get promotion from a five figure to a six figure sum to run a small organisation. But with the raised profile, increased hours, stress, responsibility and workload I'm not going to be doing this purely out of the goodness of my heart and it has to be a big jump in take home pay to make it worthwhile.

Yes a lot of tax experts think the tax system both in rUK and Scotland is already overly complex, discouraging and desperately in need of reform - but will we ever get past soundbites and arguments about individual cases?

Not when the people in charge are ideologues who refuse to make an honest case for independence, instead only asserting it will be better in every way with no downsides.

Evidence is to be weighed only when it supports your case, for these people.

I’ve always said I’d not object to a penny on income tax IF it was directed appropriately, but I really fucking object to tax revenue disappearing into the SNP black hole of incompetence/pretend embassies/foreign aid/new jags etc.

We’ll be seeking appropriate advice on maxing out pension contributions etc as dh is getting hit hard now

Totally agree . The reason tax has gone up is not to fund NHS ,carers, child poverty , services etc but to fill the £1.5 billion hole that is result of the fiscally illiterate , second rate regional administrators that are the Scottish Government. We are funding total incompetence and god knows how we stop it for the meantime .

I used to pay the extra without bothering much about it. Now? Fuck em. It's all going in my pension.

Look at the difference in tax between UK and Scotland. Astronomical.

Look at the tapering between 100-125k? That marginal rate of tax is ridiculous.

I'm just fascinated by the number of journalists and general snp cheerleaders who are apparently all higher rate tax payers and their partners are too. All of whom are glad to be paying more tax. Plus all the ones who used to be higher rate tax payers who also think it's a grand idea.

I mean, you'd almost think some of them might be lying? If not, then I'm definitely in the wrong job. Some of them can barely string a sentence together.

It's always, always described as "a wee bit more", has anyone else noticed that?

I earn an honorarium of £120 each month for the very small proofing job I do, which is obviously not taxed. Apart from that I home ed my children so I'm also economically inactive.

DH is currently in the higher income tax bracket of 42%. It will be one or two pay rises and he'll be in the new 45% bracket. Like most, he'll just put more into his pension.

@SomeCatFromJapan yes! Always a wee bit and a wee bit. Its now a big bit if you ask me!

@BigBoysDontCry i dont understand either why some people paying the tax support it. As pp have said, if services were excellent and our roads well maintained, maybe we would see value for money. Im personally more of a free market thinker but i do appreciate the argument. The facts are though, our services are crap, roads a disgrace and not only that, but the powers that be defend the dreadful state. For my sins, i sat through question time week and the SNP rep on the panel was defending the PISA education stats. I would have so much more respect, and this goes across the board, for any politician who put their hands up and said, 'the results are unacceptable we have made a big mess of it, we need to make changes and we will make it better'.

As a pp said, we have an ex social worker in charge of the budget. Why are people not being given jobs based on skills or previous experience. When you apply for a private sector job you need to meet or somewhat meet a specification. For scot gov it seems like putting your shoes on means you can run the country.

@Vettrianofan i appreciate what you say about people with disabilities but your friend with the small business shouldnt need to stifle her earnings to accomodate her benefits. This is bad for her and bad for the scottish economy. If there was a total household threshold rather than individual perhaps your friends business could flourish, the partner look after the disabled child as you have described and they be entitled to his portion of the benefits. The current system doesnt sound like it is benefitting anyone in your friends family even if it allows them to get by. Regarding the child on EMA, if they want to stay on at school then brilliant but i hope the reason is not purely that they are happy with the £30per week otherwise I dont think the entitlement should be there.

@BYDboard agree, theres no way 40% of the country are not paying tax due to disability. There are obviously a minority who cant work but it certainly shouldnt be considered the norm.

I always worry about Scotland for employment. A huge % of the workforce is public sector. Outwith the central belt apart from north sea oil, we dont have lots of opportunities. I might be wrong but my take on it is that large portions of scotland the only opportunities will really be farming or hospitality. For your average worker on a farm or in a hotel/restaurant, there is limited career progression and you will never earn big salaries. WFH will have helped the situation but id assume only for the minority.

DH has been pushing for us to move out of Scotland since the horrific indyref. This may be the final straw for us. Was happy to pay a wee bit more. But that? Fuck that.

We will be restructuring our pay to ensure we do not pay the extra tax
No way am I paying more to the financially incompetent Scottish government

If you are opposed to the changes in tax rates, what would you do instead to plug the funding gap in the budget? Which initiatives or benefits would you cancel, which public services would you reign in, or which taxes would prefer to increase?

And while im here I might as well ask about the ferry fiasco too since it's so often used in these discussions.

What would you have done instead?

Would you have outsourced the building from the start and potentially cost scottish jobs (I can only imagine what the labories would have said if that had happened)?

Or

When Ferguson Marine went bust would you have just walked away and started again (I can only imagine what the labories would have said if that had happened)?