Benef its, gender quotas and why we’ll be paying the UK’s highest taxes

SCOTLAND is to become the highest-taxed part of the UK under controversial plans due to be unveiled by Nicola Sturgeon this week.

Scottish Government sources have disclosed that the First Minister will use her Programme For Government to pave the way for a £3,000 tax grab on middleincome Scots.

Under the changes 400,000 Scots will pay more tax than their counterparts in the rest of the UK for the first time in 300 years.

Scottish Ministers will be handed the power to set income tax bands and rates next April and the First Minister intends to use them as soon as she can to fix taxes at a higher level than in the rest of the UK.

On Tuesday, Miss Sturgeon will announce her intention to bring forward a Budget Bill and a series of other financial motions which will see middle-earning Scots pay more tax at the ‘higher’ rate of 40p than south of the Border.

Every Scot earning more than £43,387 will pay £323 more than their English counterparts next year – even though they might earn exactly the same salary for doing exactly the same job.

Their tax bill will be £508 higher the following year, £648 in 2019-20 and £801 in 2020-21. Indeed, over the next five years, middle-earning Scots will pay £3,097 more in income tax than their UK counterparts.

Miss Sturgeon wants to raise money for the SNP’s public sector spending plans and hopes to rake in £300 million a year from this one tax change.

The SNP went into this year’s election promising to impose the tax grab on middle-income Scots, but little has been said about it since the party was returned to government in May.

However, a senior Scottish Government source confirmed that Ministers were determined to drive ahead with the plans.

‘We have a mandate. We were elected on a platform to do this,’ the insider said.

‘Our plans have not changed one bit. This is still a key part of our policy.’

The extra income tax levy is part of an overall SNP moneyraising strategy which Ministers claim is necessary to combat what they describe as ‘Tory austerity’.

It is further evidence of the Nationalists’ determination to raid the pockets of middle-class Scots families with every tax power at their disposal.

Medium and large Scots firms have paid the highest business rates in the Western world; the SNP replaced stamp duty with a property tax that penalised anyone buying homes for more than £325,000; and next year will see the end of the council tax freeze, with an additional hike to the bills of larger homes.

Former Chancellor George Osborne decided to offer a helping hand to middle earners by rasing the threshold at which UK workers pay the higher rate.

Mr Osborne said it would go up from £43,000 to £45,000 next April followed by annual rises taking it to £50,000 by 2020-21.

However, Miss Sturgeon has refused to match him. From April, when the tax rates power passes to Holyrood, she will instead raise the threshold at the rate of inflation – to £43,387. It will then rise more slowly in Scotland over the next four years and, by the time the threshold in the rest of the UK hits £51,000 (in 2021-22) it will be only £46,917 here.

The timing of Miss Sturgeon’s planned Budget Bill is still uncertain because Ministers want to wait until the new UK Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has published his Autumn Statement at Westminster, and no date has been agreed for that yet. A Scottish Government spokesman refused to comment on the details of the Programme For Government.

But a spokesman for campaign group Taxpayer-Scotland said: ‘The Scottish Government still thinks it can spend our money more productively than we can. That’s illiberal and an invasive taking of our property. It also destroys the very jobs and growth they say they can create.’