BY focusing on John McDonnell’s reaction to the latest Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) report, Living Standards and Inequality, Andrew McKie sidesteps the main issues (“Why it’s wrong to be too hard on the high earners”, August 7).

As the IFS report points out, income inequality rose sharply in the 1980s and has remained high since then. It should therefore be unsurprising that high earners pay more income tax than in the past and that the lowest earners do not pay income tax. The lowest earners do, however, pay taxes in various other ways such as the 20 per cent rate of VAT, other sales taxes and council tax. Despite this heroic amount of income tax paid by high earners, child poverty has increased, substantially through the freeze in benefits.

The high earners Mr McKie wants to defend have had a tax cut, as have corporations. This is not true of middle- and low-income earners. In fact, it is these earners who have borne the brunt of austerity through the longest recession on record, the slowest recovery on record and the longest decline and stall in real incomes since the Napoleonic wars. In addition, many kinds of employment have become more precarious and these earners depend more on public services, which have been subject to historically unprecedented cuts in funding.

Those high earners who have invested in the stock market have also received a substantial windfall through the effect of £435 billion of quantitative easing on asset prices.

Mr McKie ought really to have at least mentioned the wider issue of wealth distribution, not just earned income. And, anyway, haven’t we heard in the last few weeks about a further tax cut for higher rate taxpayers?

Councillor Alasdair Rankin (SNP), Edinburgh EH1.

THE issues about taxation raised by Andrew McKie are certainly worthy of examination.

Who pays? How much? Where are the concentrations of high taxpayers? Who doesn't pay and where are the concentrations of those? Where does the money go? Do we know?

All of this is important and these issues should be constantly under the scrutiny of any responsible government.

To his credit, Mr McKie acknowledges the concentration of high earners in London and the south-east of England. He also refers to the current Westminster Government's mantra about "the Northern Powerhouse". This is a code that recognises that the North (of England) has been neglected and needs more infrastructure and high-paying projects.

Few could argue with that considering successive governments' neglect of many communities in the North of England devastated by the loss of mining and major industries.

The questions raised bring up others which Mr McKie seems less ready to address.

The other side of the question of substantial numbers of people "not paying tax at all" is that their earnings are likely to be very low. For me, as a person who earned just above the average wage for most of my working life, I find it very shocking that so many are living on low wages. This is a societal issue and we should be ashamed to display such proportions of poverty.

It is disingenuous of Mr McKie to claim "the Scottish Government has the power to vary taxation". The Scottish Government has some powers to vary taxation, but not all.

It has no control over Westminster's grip of the Barnett formula which allocates to Scotland a proportion of Scottish input to the Treasury on an annual basis. We do not know the accuracy of Scottish national output because we do not have a National Statistics Agency. It doesn't take a genius to work out why.

Maggie Chetty, Glasgow G13.

IN his paean in support of high earners Andrew McKie neglects to say why he believes there should be such a differential in rewards between workers in different professions and trades. Why should a merchant banker in central London earn millions spread-betting on derivatives when the lorry-driver who delivers his whisky from Scotlandshire is paid peanuts? Why does he get paid 100 times more than the train-driver who got him to work or the bloke who makes sure when he flushes his loo that the faeces actually goes somewhere? Why does he earn squillions when the carer who looks after his kids when he abandons them every day has to rely on a government handout to survive?

The reality is that society is complex and our crumbling infrastructure and deteriorating social services are all the proof needed that our system is failing. The man who fills the potholes in the road is just as if not more important than the Rolls-Royce driver who causes them. (Excuse the hyperbole). The top one per cent may contribute more tax than some but I’m sure most of the 43 per cent who don’t currently pay tax would be happy to receive a wage that allowed them to make a contribution.

David J Crawford, Glasgow G12.