ANDREW Morrison (Letters, July 11) confuses “hard-working” and “wealthy” when he claims that “Conservatives have consistently cut taxes for hard-working people over the past nine years, and we have been especially mindful to ensure they benefit the many, not the few”. Increases in VAT to 20 per cent hit everyone, where the increase in the higher rate threshold only benefits the top 15 per cent or so. Even then the ones who are actually working lose most of the increase to higher National Insurance contributions.
On the other hand, George Osborne introduced a £1,000 tax-free allowance for interest on bank accounts. To take full advantage of this with RBS you would need almost £150,000 sitting idle in your bank account for a year, enough money to buy a house. This is running the country for the advantage of the few, not the many.
If the Government were genuinely interested in helping hard workers through the tax system, we would see a reversal of the preferential tax treatment of unearned dividends over wages, and company owners like Mr Morrison would pay themselves a higher wage instead of taking dividends.
Alan Ritchie, Glasgow G41.
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 here