A friend within the Scottish Parliament building has sent me a piece of paper which they retrieved from John Swinney’s waste paper basket.
The content is so interesting that I just had to share it with you, it is an extract from the draft of next week’s budget.
Sadly it is only part rather than the whole thing and, of course, I cannot guarantee that Mr Swinney’s final version will not change. Here it is.
“This is the first occasion in generations on which a Scottish Parliament will set the rate of income tax for the people of Scotland. The powers we have are limited, we cannot yet set each band of income tax or the rate which applies within each of them separately. Nonetheless, today’s budget is an important first step towards greater fiscal freedom for Scotland.
There is, today, an opportunity not just to set the Scottish rate of income tax for 2016/17 but to send a clear message to the people of Scotland and the wider world about what sort of country this Government wants Scotland to be.
Scotland’s needs and desires are distinct from those in other parts of the UK. Our geography is different. Our outlook is different. Scotland has always looked beyond its shores to a wider world. I believe also that our values are different. We have in this country a social conscience of which I am proud, a view that we are a community not just a collection of individuals and we have a sense of fairness. We also have challenges on social exclusion, health, education , infrastructure and child poverty which this Government is determined to address and I believe all Scotland is with us in that endeavour.
The needs our country has will best be met by ensuring that we attract, develop and retain the best people to help us address our challenges. We need more not fewer people who have the potential to earn high incomes to want to live here. We need to recognise that it is pound notes not percentages which build schools or hospitals and enable us to employ nurses or police. We must curb any instinct to act in a way which would drive away the very people we need to be here in order to make Scotland a better place.
This Government intends to build Scotland into the Enterprise Capital of Europe. We want to make Scotland the best place to be successful, for individuals to be able to create wealth for themselves and their families and in doing so pay the taxation we need. We must resist the temptation to level down through high taxes and we must understand that lower tax on wealth generation will raise more, not less, money to enable us to do what we want to do.
I therefore announce that from April 2016 the Scottish rate of income tax will be set at 9 pence. This means that every Scottish income tax payer will pay income tax at a rate which is 1 pence lower than in the rest of the UK. This is only the first step. As further powers are devolved to the Scottish Parliament this Government intends to reduce income tax rates further. The message we send is clear. If you want to be successful and to do well for yourself and your family then live in Scotland and we will all, and I mean all, be richer for it.
In future years I expect this measure to increase income tax revenues but I recognise that will not happen immediately and there will be a shortfall in 2016/17 which needs to be addressed. The government therefore proposes the following measures to support revenue in the short-term…..”
And there the extract ends.
Have a good Christmas.
- Pinstripe is a senior member of Scotland's financial services community.
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