TAX is an incredibly emotive subject.

Although we all know that our public services cannot survive if we don’t all contribute towards them, very few of us want to pay more, with many thinking the onus should be on profitable businesses to take up the slack.

But is this the right attitude to take?

Although he doesn’t say it in as many words, Aidan O’Carroll, the one-time head of accountancy firm EY’s Scottish practice who has returned north of the Border after 17 years in London, obviously feels there are risks involved in asking businesses to shoulder too heavy a tax burden.

And of course he has a point. If we want our economy to grow, with all the job-creating - and hence tax-generating - benefits that brings, we need to be able to attract as much investment as we possibly can.

While a home-grown business is unlikely to up sticks to another jurisdiction on the back of what it sees as a punitive tax regime, a foreign entity may well think twice when it comes to investing in one.

For small countries like Scotland, which needs foreign investment to help drive its economy, that is a problem, but it is not one that can be solved simply by asking individual taxpayers to contribute more.

As Mr O’Carroll said: “Turning on a small section of taxpayers is not an efficient way of balancing [the public accounts].”

“It’s about striking the balance between the Government’s need to balance its books and pay for the public services it wants to deliver while also remaining an attractive place for people and businesses to be,” he said.

The focus, Mr O’Carroll said, should be on creating an environment that allows businesses to thrive so that as they grow and employ more people the public purse not only shares in their spoils but receives more in the way of income tax too.

The problem is that that doesn’t deal with the shortfall Scotland is facing in the here and now and, with no powers to boost its revenues through corporate taxation, it looks like Holyrood will have no option but to ask individuals to contribute more in the form of income taxes.

The question is, how will it go about raising rates - and by how much?