Taxing questions
Tories accuse SNP of breaking poll promise not to raise cash levy
TORY leader Ruth Davidson has accused the Scottish Government of breaking an election pledge not to raise income tax.
The SNP promised before the 2016 Holyrood election not to increase the basic rate for five years.
But Finance Secretary Derek Mackay is expected to hike income tax in December’s Budget.
Davidson said: “The truth is, the SNP wheeled out Mr Swinney, ‘honest John’, before the election to tell people that their taxes wouldn’t go up.
“And as soon as they got back in those promises turned to dust.”
Deputy First Minister John Swinney hit back claiming Tory austerity had forced the SNP to make “real hard decisions” about tax.
This year has been the first when Holyrood has had power over income tax rates and bands.
For 2017-18, ministers made only minor changes, keeping the threshold for the 40p rate of tax at £43,000 instead of following Westminster by increasing it to £45,000.
The Budget to be unveiled next month will include tax plans for 2018-19.
Davidson reminded Swinney that before the May 2016 elections, he had said a “tax rise would be a punishment” for low-income workers.
She also recalled that in April 2016, Swinney “promised that basic rate taxpayers would not see their tax bills rise” for the remainder of the parliamentary term.
She said: “Just a few weeks before the election, he said this: ‘I want to say to teachers and public service workers the length and breadth of the country, I value the sacrifices they have made and the last thing I am going to do is put up their taxes’.
“The last thing? It turns out the only thing you lot are going to do with taxes is put them up.”
Swinney – standing in for Nicola Sturgeon at First Minister’s Questions – insisted the SNP would “stand shoulder-toshoulder with low income households in Scotland and take the right decisions to protect their incomes”.
He said: “The Scottish Government is engaged in a substantive debate with members of the public about the real choices that are faced when you are in government, when you are trying to address the fact that public expenditure has been slashed by the UK government and that austerity continues to roll forward year by year.
“So we are involved in that discussion because we have to take the real hard decisions in government.”
Public spending has been slashed by UK and austerity goes on JOHN SWINNEY