To want to move to England because of Scottish tax.

[Nogg]

Is anyone else thinking of moving to England because of tax. I’m a single parent and I am paying 7k extra tax a year. The place I live is run down. I really want to move but the only issue kids settled in ( failing) Scottish education system. I wonder if anything will change at next election? Hate SNP and what they have done to Scotland.

We bought a house in Scotland this year - double the stamp duty (at £50k) the same price house would have been in London. It was a real blow!

We love living in Scotland though but sometimes I think all the crowing about free prescriptions is silly and blinds people to other faults of the government - when we left England a few years ago it was about £6/7 for a prescription, free contraceptives and obviously free if you were on benefits etc. since we’ve moved luckily none of my family have needed a prescription.

An SNP election pledge was to provide every child in secondary with a tablet style device. Our local secondary has only a handful, certainly not one per child. My brother teaches in England and it’s standard in his school for kids to have a device made available to them.

My local council is £500m in debt so no doubt can’t afford it.

and as for finding an NHS dentist! My parents are further north and their closest is 90 mins away. There isn’t one in the town I live in.

Probably getting confused with the personal care allowance?

Jack McConnell was on times radio this morning and I agree with his opinion that Scottish education is worse than ever. He touched on some ideas for Scottish education his administration were thinking about when he was first minister and they seemed sensible.
I may not agree with everything he did when first minister or his opinions but from his Friday slot on the times I’m regularly reminded how far the calibre of today’s MSPs has fallen.

My eldest adult child teaches a science in secondary in England and says the curriculum they are teaching is much harder than curriculum of excellence.

Not quite correct there are also other "pockets" where housing is as expensive as in London.

You are earning well over 100k - so top few percent - another super rich person with a winge about how awful things are - the top 4% are always on here moaning about how hard it is for them , how they begrudge paying their taxes

If you haven't lived in England you may not realise how much worse things can be there - yes things could be a lot worse

But ta-ra.

I argue that the best argument against independence is the SNP.

I think you should think carefully, given the university costs as mentioned (if it is something any of your DC might want to go to) and also the better system in Scotland for house sale/purchase.

I don’t grudge taxes but do grudge some
areas of marginal tax rate at over 70%. Take home is not what you would think ( single person versus two earning).And I have to run around all the time knackered, not leisurely collecting kids doing activities with them while on tax credits. Also as mentioned Scotland feels quite run down having lived in England ( south for several years). Other option is just to reduce hours and pay less tax to SNP coffers.

Oh you think someone living on tax credits has a nice lessurly lifestyle?

So why don't you just live that way if it's so much easier ?

My heart does not bleed that you are not richer at the expense of others less fortunate

I’m not an snp fan now. In fact I think the one real benefit of independence would be the breaking up of the single-issue snp. If Scotland got independence then snp members would have to lay out their actual policies and beliefs and it would soon show that they’re not a coherent ideology outside of wanting independence.

Despite the snp though I would much rather live here than go back to England where I have lived in the past. I prefer many aspects of our approach to education, I can’t bear the academy chain approach. I think our nhs is marginally less bad and overall the quality of life is better where I am than an equivalent place in England. I think the minimum alcohol pricing is a decent idea - we cannot sit by and ignore our drug and alcohol death rates. Other Northern Europe countries with similar hard drinking cultures have much more expensive alcohol and if I will happily pay more for my decent wine if it has even the smallest impact on alcohol related deaths (which we don’t know yet as it’ll take a decade or more to see).

Yep, some serious jokers out there

Decent tap water!

I’m paying more into my pension to offset the tax. I’ll benefit from it later.

I work with someone who has been offered extra hours at work, but won’t take them because if they go over 16 hours they lose their benefits.
So tax payers are subsidising their part time lifestyle.
This is so wrong. It should always be financially better to be in work.

I’m not an snp fan now. In fact I think the one real benefit of independence would be the breaking up of the single-issue snp. If Scotland got independence then snp members would have to lay out their actual policies and beliefs and it would soon show that they’re not a coherent ideology outside of wanting independence.

What a completely bizarre statement. The SNP have been in government in Holyrood since 2007. They release a manifesto before every single election. Are you seriously purporting that Scotland has been functioning since 2007 absent of any governmental policy beyond Scottish Independence?

As PP said, some serious jokers out there.

They will not "lose" their benefits. They'll face an escalating reduction in benefit in line with their increased earnings.

We moved to Scotland from London. Our 4 bedroom house costs the same as our tiny 2 bed flat in SE London. 30h nursery hours for all, not means tested (how much does all that admin cost in England?), free prescriptions, I can get a GP appointment same day no bother. I had none of this in England! Add to that the change to deferral for school starters, free university & (I think!) a much better quality of life where we are (west) than we could ever afford in England.

There’s no incentive to work more. They would rather enjoy the time off.

I moved from small village in England to small village in Scotland. I will never go back to England. It is a far better way of life here. We bought a 6 bedroom house for less than a one bedroom house would cost in our old village. Wages the same in both places so we're actually much better off considering the lower price of housing.
More space, more nature, slower way of life. We're living our dream.

Well what have they done? Name one big policy rolled out in the past 10 years? They could have increased Council tax and rejigged the bands to make it fair, ditching the world worst tax stamp duty in the process; they could have binned the failed CfE; they could have put an enquiring eye as to why SNHS haemorrhages money in a way the English NHS doesn’t; they could have got rid of thousands of inefficient public sector jobs; they could have asked themselves why the rUK has managed to fund rates cuts for hospitality businesses, cladding restoration work, hsbloody 2 whereas the money the SNP receive in Barnett consequentials for this disappears down the back of the sofa. How do they make so much money disappear? It’s unfathomable. It’s the only - the only - thing they do well. No new policies whatsoever. It’s shameful.

I see the latest budget they are throwing more money at SNHS and expect to be applauded. Don’t they see their failings here?

RUK is run badly I must admit, but the Scottish government beats then hands down.

Which is indicative of a fundamental problem in the UK economy, i.e. in-work benefits top up wholly inadequate salaries and wages, and the government is subsidising and enabling companies to record vast profits and pay huge dividends while simultaneously criminally underpaying staff.

To those saying their kids will get free tuition - they probably won’t, especially if they’re bright and trying to get into an elite course at a top Scottish university. Because of course, now our universities have limited / zero space for anyone who’s Scottish and not socio economically deprived.

Middle class Scots rejected from unis

I’m in a similar earning bracket to the OP.

You’re on a hiding to nothing, no one feels sorry for high earners. But people should be more aware that pushing this differential between Scotland and England is actively damaging. We need that tax income, and people respond to incentives.

Well what have they done? Name one big policy rolled out in the past 10 years?

Social Security Scotland, and the moratorium on the utterly hideous WCA scheme still being used elsewhere.

RUK is run badly I must admit, but the Scottish government beats then hands down

What is your yardstick? It can't be public sector service, because Scotland's outperform those elsewhere in the UK in almost every respect, so are we back to this palpably ridiculous idea that whoever is governing from Holyrood not only has to outperform Westminster, but vastly outperform them and remain entirely blemish-free, while having only a fraction of the freedom to operate a Westminster government does?

Also worth reading if you care about impact of higher Scottish taxes, and not just “the rich can afford it”.

“Overall, then, the available quantitative evidence suggests important behavioural responses to Scotland’s higher marginal and average income tax rates for those with the highest incomes – potentially a bit larger than assumed in the SFC’s policy costings. Indeed, the central estimates of behavioural response from HMRC’s two studies would suggest that previous increases in Scotland’s top rate of income tax will have slightly reduced revenues rather than slightly increased them as the SFC’s assumptions imply.”

Impact of higher taxes in Scotland

I think you should think carefully, given the university costs as mentioned

We are not going to have universities if Scot Gov don't give in and allow fees. They could start by just making students match the £1800 or whatever the gov pay each year. That wouldn't bankrupt students in a graduate tax.

That’s one of the standard bottle sizes? You don’t have to drink it in one go, you know.

Like a PP we turned down a move to Scotland as the SEN offer was too bad for our child. It was sad as it was otherwise a brilliant option and I still feel a bit wistful. But the provision in England has made all the difference to them so the rest wouldn’t have made up for that. Having said that, I’d happily pay more in tax on my income to see better public services at this point.