AS a 29-year-old looking to get his foot on the property ladder, marry and settle down, Robert Fyfe has as much a stake in the budget as anyone in the UK.
He felt that Chancellor Philip Hammond had thrown down the gauntlet to the minority SNP administration at Holyrood with his pledge to scrap Stamp Duty for all fire-time buyers purchasing a house under £300,000, and hopes to see Scotland follow suit.
North of the Border Stamp Duty has been replaced with the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT), and different rules apply.
Here, a tax of 2 per cent is levied on purchases over £145,000, rising to 5 per cent on homes worth £245,000 and above, meaning Scots will pay more tax on lower-value homes than the rest of the UK next year.
Mr Fyfe, of Lennoxtown, East Dunbartonshire said: "The Stamp Duty apples to England and Wales only and we'll likely be paying more than the threshold for LBTT here, so it remains to be seen if the Scottish Government will follow suit.
"We're coming up to buying our first house and now it looks as though people in our position in England and Wales will pay nothing, but we'll still face an additional cost and it's up in the air whether it will be removed here too.
"Every little helps when you're making a purchase as large as this."
Mr Fyfe added that he was not confident that the SNP would adjust LBTT in the light of the Chancellor's statement as he believes they remain "obsessed" with independence at the expense of the finer detail of government.
One factor of the budget that also caught his eye was the increasing of the personal tax allowance by £350.
However, the primary school teachers aid it would be too little, too late to make a difference to many workers today.
He said: "Working in the public sector we have a pay freeze and we're still waiting to hear what our pay rise from April should have been.
"The talks with the union keep on going, when we should be sitting down to talk about next year's rise by now.
"Wages stay the same while inflation keeps rising so I don't see a small adjustment to the amount of tax I'll pay really helping much."
A non-smoker who doesn't drink to excess, Mr Fyfe said that changes to the amount of duty on alcohol and cigarettes would not really affect him.
Duty on beer, wine, spirits and most ciders is to be frozen, equating to 12p off a pint of beer and £1.15 off a bottle of whisky by next April, but this will most likely be cancelled out by the introduction of a minimum price per unit of alcohol in Scotland next year.
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