Letters: There is a compelling case for a tax on property tax

One big difference is that, if the buyer neglects to pay stamp duty, the house can be seized to recover the tax. If the seller neglects to pay stamp duty, the money and the seller could escape the reach of the courts. A higher stamp duty is absolutely to be discouraged as it reduces the ability of people to move house and find work elsewhere in the country. We divide the country into those who move house relatively frequently, and pay stamp duty frequently, and those who can stay in the same house for a lifetime and only pay it once or twice.

We need to move from taxing a transaction, to a regular tax on property wealth.

If the UK is to cut taxes on enterprise and hard work, perhaps we should increase taxes on unearned income – only the very wealthy can afford to take advantage of Conservative changes such as putting the maximum £20,000 into a tax-free ISA every year or receive £1,000 tax free in bank interest when interest rates on savings are barely 0.1 per cent. Imagine where we might be if people like the royal family or George Osborne paid substantially more (whisper it) inheritance tax.

Alan Ritchie,

2/2 72 Waverley Street,

Glasgow.

PINSTRIPE states that the private sector is better at delivering services efficiently than the public sector. The efficiency of the banking sector was demonstrated in 2008 when it failed spectacularly and had to be bailed out by the tax paid by hard working families.

The private sector’s responsibility is to its shareholders and service comes a second best.

Our transport system cannot be properly integrated because of the differing interests of the private companies involved. A mixed economy consisting of private and public sectors is the only sensible way forward.

Duncan Stirling,

Woodcroft,

Cardross.

THERE are 242,000 local authority workers in Scotland. Most are about to have a pay rise of between one and three per cent, costing between £100 million and £300m, paid for by a tax rise of up to £290m.

The Scottish Government has a huge deficit. Patrick Harvey, co-convener of the Scottish Greens, may be forcing the SNP to use up all the tax gains to pay for these pay rises but he must be in on the real mission, which is to get rid of staff. Angus Council is shedding 800 of its 4,000 staff in the next three years. If this is typical, almost 50,000 council workers across Scotland will lose their jobs.

This will easily pay for pay rises for those remaining. And, assuming they will be retrained, it will make a big dent in our skills shortages and calls for more immigration.

Allan Sutherland,

1 Willow Row,

Stonehaven.

WITH the Scottish economy growing at one-third of the UK rate, the Fraser of Allander Institute is right to stress that the Holyrood budget is an important opportunity for the SNP to tackle Scotland’s poor economic performance (“Thins tank issues tax rise warning to SNP Finance Secretary, The Herald, December 12).

Yet it seems widespread income tax rises will take centre stage in the budget. Nicola Sturgeon maintains these are necessary to fund public services, despite the Barnett Formula enabling higher public sector spending here than elsewhere in the UK. It would appear we’re about to learn the hard way that universal free prescriptions, university tuition fees, bus passes and so on aren’t free at all but must be paid for through taxation.

The First Minister is banking on taxpayers trusting the SNP with even more of our hard-earned cash. Based on such indicators as the state of our education system, NHS waiting times, chaos at Police Scotland and the condition of the roads after a decade of SNP management, how many of us are thoroughly convinced we should pay more tax?

Martin Redfern,

Woodcroft Road,

Edinburgh.

YOUR headlines about nurses (“One-third of nurses want to quit due to stress”, The Herald, December 12) and tax rises must make uncomfortable reading for the SNP. It is faced with an impossible situation due to its inability to produce workable policies.

Having more or less promised to raise the pay of nurses substantially and hence set the bar for everyone else, it is now juggling with the proposed tax rises to pay for this that will not only be very unpopular but will also be insufficient.

The economy cannot support more grandiose SNP schemes and that magic word prudence must make a reappearance soon.

The SNP’s policy thrust has been based on criticising the Tories over austerity and insisting that it must end; hence Finance Secretary Derek Mackay must become a first-class conjurer in his budget to avoid the SNP’s act being booed off the stage.

The party might be good at sleight of hand but this time there is no magic money tree in Scotland’s garden to rescue its performance from becoming a pantomime.

Dr Gerald Edwards,

Broom Road, Glasgow.

RUTH Marr describes the UK as an “unequal Union” (Letters, December 12). One wonders in what kind of world there can be an arrangement more equal than one voter, one vote, the basis on which we decided to leave the EU. Likewise, Scots decided on the same basis to stay in that Union in 2014, which is a good job as the evidence is that, otherwise, Scotland would have left the UK and with it the EU in March 2016.

We can only imagine the chaos that would have ensued when the SNP tried to negotiate simultaneous exits from both unions in a space of 18 months.

Peter A Russell,

87 Munro Road, Glasgow.