AS Holyrood reconvenes, the debate is turning turn to tax. The weekend saw the Scottish Greens’ co-convener, Patrick Harvie, playing to the gallery at his party’s conference with a call for tax rises for higher earners. He’ll be supported by Labour,conscious that it’s what members want and where opprobrium, if any, will fall on the Scottish Government.

The SNP won’t be reluctant conscripts. However, they’ve been right to be cautious, not just because punitive taxation will be counterproductive, but because the debate should really be about wealth, not wages.

I’ve supported increased taxation not just for the wealthy but for the middle class. There really is no alternative. Public services must be paid for and they are under increasing pressure. Moreover, in Scotland there are many more social benefits provided for all, from the absence of tuition fees to pensioner travel, that come at a cost and need to be funded. Middle earners benefit disproportionately from that and should pay for it.

I saw a piece from a new alt-right commentator – one of those in vogue now – arguing that taxation was akin to theft. What utter rot. It’s as fatuous a statement as that from the far left that all property is theft. Taxation is about living as a society and contributing fairly according to means. Simply because I no longer have children at school doesn’t mean education isn’t my responsibility or because I’m fit and healthy I shouldn’t pay for the NHS. Tax may not fill us with glee but it’s the right way to run our society. It has, though, been reducing whilst services and requirements for them have been increasing. Hence change is needed and that means an increase.

However, despite the rhetoric employed by Mr Harvie there’s no pot of gold awaiting the Scottish Government at the end of the taxation rainbow. The number of high earners is very limited and the burden on middle earners can’t be made unbearable when inflation is rising and standards of living falling. Moreover, calls are rightly made for a reduction in the burden on the lowest earners, which will also require to be funded from the same pot.

It’s all about calibration, but turn the dial too high and high earners will simply disappear off the radar with advice from tax accountants or a notional change in domicile to another of their addresses. The Government has already been stung by its Land Tax, where initially at least revenue projections have been lower than first estimated. That will likely be resolved as people become accustomed to it and it simply becomes accepted. Some of that is understandable as many if not most of the levers for addressing that are reserved to Westminster. They won’t be utilised at the moment where the entire ethos of the UK Government is to make the rich even richer.

However, it does result in the debate being about high salaries rather than concentrated wealth, whether in land, property or other assets, and often not even in this country. Yet that is where the real divide and disparity is. To really address inequality action needs taken against that. The ownership of so much of Scotland lies in the hands of a few, and trust funds abound in tax havens. Much wealth id neither acquired by hand nor brain but most often simply through genes and inheritance.

Concentrating the debate on high earners allows the real super-rich to escape from paying their way, as well as increasing the level of inequality. That doesn’t mean that action shouldn’t be taken on high wages. Some salaries are not just ridiculous but obscene, when so many are dependent on so little.

But it suits the rich and powerful to obscure the debate. There is focus on footballers, wages yet the land that they hold or the assets secreted away are ignored. It benefits them if the rage is over higher tax bands and the debate on inheritance tax, capital gains tax and other methods to redistribute from the few to the many is ignored.

It was the same with debates on wage rates between trades in the shipyards. The workers were divided and pilloried. Yet the directors from their private dining rooms moved their assets out, failing to reinvest in the industry yet retaining their wealth.

As indirect tax through VAT and other impositions has increased, the burden on the poor has risen whilst being eased on the truly wealthy. Meanwhile, those other taxes that fall upon the very few and allow for significant redistribution have been hugely reduced. The real divide in our society isn’t between high and low wage earners but between those on a wage and those with wealth in all its facets.

By all means let’s increase tax on higher earners but let’s also focus on wealth.