IT may amaze you to learn that I sometimes get negative feedback as a result of what I say in this column. I rather enjoy the flak - a good debate is healthy.

To my last column I received a challenge that I am often having a go at others - which I accept - there is a lot to have a go at - but the challenge went on to say why don’t I say what I would do instead.

OK, I will do that and - because it’s Scottish budget time - let’s focus on taxation.

I accept the need for more taxation - our public services, our roads, our schools, our hospitals, above all our social care system do need more money.

There are some core principles on which I think change to Scotland’s tax and spending should be based.

First, the private sector is in general better at delivering services efficiently than the public sector. This is often because the public sector gets confused in its objectives and thinks its purpose is to look after nurses, teachers and firefighters when it is really to deliver high quality services at least cost to those who are ill, those who need education and those who have a fire in their house.

The change which is needed - hugely unpopular of course - is that the public sector should try where possible to confine itself to defining what is required and monitoring standards but the default position should be that the private sector delivers services.

Second, I would stop narrowing the tax base. A better tax system takes small amounts of tax fairly frequently from a lot of people not a huge slug, occasionally from a few. That is not to say that taxation should not be progressive - it should be - but if you keep narrowing the tax base revenues will eventually collapse.

Examples of this are that we should stop raising the personal income tax allowance by more than inflation - people should pay a little bit of income tax.

To the same end SDLT (Stamp Duty Land Tax) should be reformed. Full reform would be better but as a quick fix I would cut all the rates by one third but make sellers as well as buyers pay it. More tax is raised but each person pays less than those who pay now.

Third, we must get our heads round the fact that nothing is free - somebody is always paying. This means that we need to think carefully before giving, for example, bus passes to everybody over 60 which means their bus rides are paid for by taxpayers - please stop calling them free bus passes. It also means we should charge a modest amount to cross the Forth Road Bridge or use the M8 - and plough the money directly into our crumbling roads and railways.

Fourth, we must encourage dynamism in the economy - which create jobs and pays for services - and focus tax more on idle capital.

To properly address this the UK Government needs to come to the party, for example introducing an annual tax on wealth but the Scottish Government can also act. What we absolutely should not do is tax people’s hard work and enterprise more. We should be reducing income taxes - and Scotland could make a lot of money from doing that - but it is economic illiteracy to raise higher rates of income tax above those which prevail in England. Much better would be to double Council tax rates and leave income tax alone. That way you raise more money and don’t damage economic dynamism.

Over to you Mr Mackay.