Support for a local income tax is one thing that the Liberal Democrats and SNP agree on in Scotland (cue argument about how many other such things there are…). With the SNP minority government there’s now quite a good chance that a local income tax will be introduced, but the SNP want a flat rate of tax across the whole country whilst the Liberal Democrats want councils to be able to set their own tax levels.
There’s more detail at the BBC. This will be an interesting one to watch as (yet again in Scotland) there’s a very real chance of Liberal Democrat policies being put into effect.
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9 Comments
The SNP are not advocating a Lib Dem policy in this area though.
Though your right – it will be interesting to see how much influence we can have on policy without being part of the government
God help the Scots. Hopefully, the SNP and Lib Dems will be forced to back down.
“the Liberal Democrats want councils to be able to set their own tax levels”
That’s the only bit of good news in this story. Hopefully most will want to set LIT at 0% and put pressure on the Scottish Executive to LOWER income tax by 3p (as it is empowered to do) with LVT plugging the gap.
This party has allegedly embraced a Tax Switch tax OFF work and onto waste and wealth appropriation. Not much evidence so far!
Who do we think pays income tax anyway? It’s a cost to business that is passed on to consumers, with heaviest incidence on the poor. If there was any substance to redistribution claims we would have eradicated poverty a long time ago.
Income tax, local or national, is part of the problem not the solution.
100 years ago, this party understood that basic economic truth – http://www.1909.org.uk
These days we struggle to understand what we voted for at our last Conference -Fairer, Simpler, Greener?
I despair.
Of course, if we’re not careful the media will just portray us badly over this – the differences in detail between SNP proposals and our policy might not lend themselves so well to understanding by the press and public, and therefore any opposition will be seen as us opposing for the sake of it or else going back on our manifesto commitments.
Promoting a policy as uninspiring as Local Income Tax is a waste of time.
Having voted for the libs. in national and U.K. elections since charlie kenedy opposed the liars in government on Iraq(that goes on and on) and supporting the sound and fair proposal to end the unfair council tax system, in particular towards elderly people relying on state pensions. I am astounded that in these historic days ending the grip of labour over scotland the liberals are not agreeing with the snp to get rid of this system and replace it with a 3% income tax. If this nonsense continues you certainly will lose my support and for a supporter of the U.K. , its a lil difficulut to say but even I will support snp at the next elections. I want rid of Blair Brown their corruption , internments laws, police shooting people in the streets , Lord Falcner and his arrogance towards democracy, Nuclear arms, Council tax. Need i go on? Libs. and snp were very close it appeared to me, what kept me lib. was the U.K. commitment , but that cant go on . Negociate.
**Wot graeme j a taylor Says.**
Not while Nicol Stephen remains such an ineffectual leader that he can’t get a grip on Tavish’s angry man routine. The press just go straight to Tavish now for comment and bypass Nicol and the party press office.
Nor while the others MSPs fail to get a grip on Tavish as well and demand that Nicol bring him to book for his freelance actions.
He’s making the Scottish Liberal Democrats look like Labour’s little helpers as he follows them on every issue.
If the SNP are really proposing that local authorities should have their levels of local taxation imposed on them by central (i.e. Scottish, in this case) government, this is a lot more than merely a disagreement over details. I’m a supporter of local income tax, but if the price of LIT was removing all local control over the overall level of councils’ expenditure, I’ve no doubt which I would regard as the most important Liberal principle.
Can anyone point me in the direction of where I could find the published DETAILS of the Liberal Democrats local income tax policy with respect to a variable rate?
Who is collecting it?
Will a base rate be set initially?
Will it be capped?
Where are the DETAILS?