Do you pay a lot more tax?

[OwlsR]

I’m in England and just jealous about Scotland not having peak time rail fares.

i know the free university tuition is funded by reducing places and is causing problems for Scottish students.

free prescriptions would not cost a lot as most people who get multiple prescriptions already don’t pay, tbut it would all add up?
Or are there other things we get in England that Scots don’t?

Yes - again - likely to be squeezed given the funding crisis as these are publicly funded jobs. Anyway, think my point is clear, Scotland is excellent, don’t base a big move on things that a govt can easily change around benefits and taxes won’t be going down you’d have to be mad to think they won’t go up increasingly - good luck @OwlsR

Both of our salaries are higher than they would be in England so even with the higher rate of tax, we still come out better off.

However, the LBTT is so prohibitive! It means my parents are stuck in a huge house they can’t keep up with, and at the same time we feel we should have held out renting until we could have afforded a ‘forever home’ rather than just a foot in the property ladder. That would be the one tax I’d complain about in Scotland. Not sure what I would sacrifice to bring it down though.

LBTT is insane. It’s such a daft tax anyway as it discourages people from moving home, but it is so expensive in Scotland. I paid £62k last time I moved, for a house worth £850k, hardly a mansion in Edinburgh. It’s a staggering amount of money. It would have been £32k in England which is still a stupid amount, but not working for years just to pay to move house. People don’t move as a result. They sit in housing that is no longer fit for their purposes because it makes no sense for them to do otherwise. They keep their job hunt to the area in which they can commute to. Such a terrible tax.

What makes no sense though it why does the government collect all of this tax from me, and not the (more wealthy) neighbours who have lived in their houses for many many years. A tax - such as they have in many European countries - where you are charged a proportion of the value of your property every year instead of stamp duty and council tax would make much more sense.

My husband and I I each pay about £300 a year more in Tax than we would in England. But all the “free” things were in place long before they raised taxes.

ScotGov has a different set of priorities. More populist policies, promising a free unicorn helps their cause. It just means they are not funding other things.

For example, universities are losing money, courses are being cut. They had a council tax freeze for a decade which has left many councils facing bankruptcy and not the SNP are having to try and sort that out. Once the freeze was lifted, it meant councils immediately raised council tax to bring it to the level it should have been, mine has gone up 15%. Education is failing, social care is failing, the NHS is failing, but hey! You get a free baby box.

Yes DH and I pay more tax but we are happy to do so. We would support higher income tax, tbh. A return to the mid 1980s levels would be good for the country.

It’s pretty short sighted to think that coming out of the workplace for the childcare years means 30 years later that’s the reason for someone being in dire straits. There are many decisions made over that 30 year period that will have resulted in dire straits, decisions about jobs, training, housing that will have contributed.

People need to avoid the knee jerk “most of one salary will go on childcare” decisions, yes, but if you’re struggling 30 years later something has gone wrong in your planning.

I’m both paid more in Scotland and pay much more tax, between higher salary and cheaper housing I think I win over all.

No - quality of healthcare isn’t better countrywide ( like everywhere else in UK there’s huge variations in quality) due partly to SNP mismanagement but also due to doctor shortages especially consultants - naturally enough they prefer not to pay more tax.

Bear in mind some apparent advantages are not in reality or at least more complicated. Free university places are limited. Scottish students aren’t allowed to pay Scottish uni fees so if the uni has reached its allocation of govt funded tuition places then the young Scottish person has to go elsewhere - often to England to pay tuition. We’re losing a lot of potential higher rate taxpayers that way. For example, no middle class kids from non deprived postcodes were admitted to Edinburgh uni law for at least two years.

The Scottish government has the ability to raise Scottish income tax even higher. The only reason it hasn’t done so is probably because there are only 6-7 per cent higher tax rate payers in Scotland who already pay a huge proportion of all income tax and NI contributions. They’re also the
‘highly mobile’ taxpayers who
might well decamp over the border if pressed too far… I certainly would.

Yes, but I dont know many happy teachers. It’s been done to death on Scotsnet but you have real discipline and violence problems due to the effective removal of the ability to exclude or realistic behavioural sanctions. Additionally the integration of children with extreme SEN without corresponding manpower is a real issue.

There are disadvantages to " free" .
The squeeze on Scottish students who can't get uni places has already been outlined.
I know many many people here,who can afford prescriptions. Make them means tested as in England so those on benefits get them free but the rest pay.

Talk of greenery and scenery are all very well,but it depends where you live. There are parts of Edinburgh,Glasgow,Aberdeen and Dundee that are urban shitholes with high unemployment. Scotland has the highest rate of drug offenders in the whole of Europe! Very hard to get an NHS dentist, and NHS Scotland is on its knees.
Add in the high taxes and the utterly dreadful public transport and roads,and it's not as rosy as the SNP make out.
I'll be leaving as soon as I retire hopefully.

Completely agree.

Scottish government is so proud of paying teachers more and paying NHS staff more without thinking about to what extent this improves the service. It doesn’t.

Teachers no doubt appreciate the higher pay, but would it not have been wiser for politicians to keep pay the same as England and use the money saved to reopen pupil referral units to ensure violent pupils are removed from mainstream schooling? Pupil and teacher safeguarding seems to be being totally swept under the carpet. SNHS employs so many more people per head of population (33.3 staff members per 1,000) compared to England (24.6 per 1,000) and yet the service is worse. It makes you think someone is spending the money very inefficiently.