Scots' fantasy budget may not be Chancellor's

On the chancellor's spending dial, they would push education up by 15per cent to £104billion, overtaking welfare which would go down by 18 per cent to £89bn. That would mean £20bn of welfare cuts - £8bn more than has been pledged by the Conservatives. (People across the UK were even more bracing, wanting £27bn of cuts.)

Environment subsidies would for Scots more than double to £24bn, while NHS spending would rise to £140bn. Transport investment would jump by 61per cent to £32bn.

But to help pay for this they would also be prepared to slash spending on older people's subsidies (pensions, concessionary travel, winter fuel, social care) by a huge £45bn to £105bn.

Dean Lamble, managing director at SunLife said: "These findings suggest that more of us are happy to make our own provisions for the future, especially if given more financial freedom through lower taxes."

But while the Chancellor is unlikely to be plotting many tax giveaways, he will almost certainly take aim at tax reliefs which give an incentive to save.

"One potential area Mr Osborne may be considering is targeting salary sacrifice arrangements," says Peter Nutini at Johnston Carmichael Wealth. " While nothing happened despite the speculation around this measure a couple of years ago, the Conservative pledge not to raise income tax, NI and VAT for the next five years could put it back on the agenda as a relatively easy way of raising income for the Treasury. This would, however, result in significant changes to payroll and employee contracts of employment."

At present employees can opt to trade a top slice of their salary for non-cash benefits, reducing their own tax bill (and their employer's national insurance costs) and enhancing their pension contributions or receiving a benefit such as child care vouchers.

However there should at least be a rise in the personal tax allowance and the higher rate tax threshold, from next April. The government is pledged to raise the tax-free allowance to £12,500 (currently £10,600) and the 40p income tax threshold to £50,000 (currently £42,385) by 2020.

There is also Marriage Allowance - which Labour had promised to scrap - allowing a basic rate taxpayer an extra £1,060 personal allowance if their spouse or civil partner earns less than £9,000.

Rob Burgeman at Brewin Dolphin says: "At the moment the tax system is prejudiced against families where one parent works and one is more active in childcare. We would like to see a change to tax allowances so that couples could elect to be taxed jointly, with two sets of all allowances and two sets of pension allowances"

Inheritance tax relief is also likely to rise, with the government committed to lifting an individual's 'nil rate band' (allowance) from £325,000 to £500,000, enabling couples to shelter an asset worth £1bn from IHT.

Nutini says : "The additional £175,000 per person to reach the magic £1m cap may only apply to a couple's property rather than other assets. This could have an impact on the wider property market if elderly people were incentivised to remain in large properties, or even upscale later in life, to ensure their wealth can be passed on tax-free to their family."

These giveaways will have to be funded, probably by a cut in pensions tax relief for higher earners and possibly a rise in capital gains tax.

David Thomson at VWM Wealth in Glasgow says: "There has been talk that tax-free cash might get reduced. I personally believe CGT will come under the microscope, perhaps being raised in line with income tax rates."

Danny Cox at Hargreaves Lansdown calls for a positive reform of gains tax. "Investors should be rewarded through the tax system for holding an investment for a longer period - currently they are no incentives to hold an investment for any period of time."

Jason Whyte, director at EY, says a pension tax relief rate of 30per cent for all - floated by former pensions minister Steve Webb - "would in one move give lower earners a bigger incentive to save, reduce the tax 'leakage' from high earners by closing the gap between the tax relief they receive and the (usually lower) tax they pay in retirement, and cut the overall bill for pensions tax relief".

Richard Harwood at Brewin Dolphin says of the tax-friendly Enterprise Investment Scheme : "Previous rules for EIS have caused funds to be targeted at solar power, windfarms and biomass fuels and have made a big difference. There is a real opportunity here to use EIS relief to support social and affordable housing by encouraging investment for the good of society."