Scottish Labour has claimed many pipers and other traditional musicians will not gain any benefit announced in the Budget from a new tax break for orchestras.
The party said the Government's consultation on the tax credit provided a definition of an "orchestral performance" that would exclude pipe bands and folk ensembles
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra will be among those to benefit from the changes which will start next year.
But a Labour source said: "George Osborne droned on for nearly an hour, but now we know that his tax credit for orchestras won't apply to pipe bands. This tax break will disproportionately help London and the south east.
"By restricting it so significantly, the Government have cut out Scotland's many pipers and traditional music players. This is a significant blow."
However, film making and high end TV shows, such as the US TV series Outlander which is being shot in Scotland, will benefit from "more generous" tax breaks following the budget.
Mr Osborne said: "Our creative industries are already a huge contributor to the British economy - and today we make our TV and film tax credits more generous, expand our support for the video games industry and we launch our new tax credit for orchestras.
"Britain is a cultural centre of the world - and with these tax changes I'm determined we will stay in front."
The tax relief to encourage film production in the UK will increase to "25 per cent for all qualifying core expenditure, for all eligible film productions".
The minimum UK expenditure on any show, required to quality for the high-end television tax relief, will be cut from 25 per cent to 10 per cent.
A new children's television tax incentive will also be introduced from April.
Orchestras will benefit from a new tax relief, at a rate of 25 per cent, introduced in April 2016.
The deduction will be on on expenditure such as player fees, rehearsal costs and venue hire, including a higher rate for touring productions.
A Creative Scotland spokesperson: "Creative Scotland welcomes the announcement from the UK Government regarding tax reliefs for TV and film production and of further investment in skills development in the creative industries. "
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article