Hundreds of Scottish Government officials avoid soaring SNP taxes... by living in England
Penny Mordaunt tea
Hundreds of Scottish Government officials are registered as taxpayers in England, meaning they are able to avoid soaring rates of tax imposed in Scotland by the SNP.
The Scottish Conservative Party has described the situation as "embarrassing and telling".
Almost one in every 50 members of government employees in Scotland is said to be living in England.
Tory MSP Liz Smith said the SNP's tax bands are "clobbering" Scottish voters.
She said: “It is embarrassing and telling that so many Scottish Government staff should be paying the rate that applies south of the border to avoid the punitive tax imposed by the SNP.
“While it is entirely understandable that those with valid grounds for doing so - for example, if their family home is in England - should choose to avoid the extra tax imposed by the SNP, it is also a humiliating rebuke to their employer.
“After the latest tax hikes in Shona Robison’s budget, it would be no surprise if more people in the south of Scotland moved house to Berwick or Carlisle to avoid being clobbered further.
“These figures are a portent of the growing behavioural change we can expect in the wider workforce because the SNP Government continue to make it more expensive to live here.
“Those huge extra costs for middle earners actually bring in a tiny proportion of the SNP’s funding shortfall, but they risk driving away the doctors, dentists, business people, engineers and others that are crucial to Scotland’s economic health.”
But SNP Finance Secretary Shona Robison said: “We will take precisely zero lessons from the Tories on tax policy – their credibility rating was downgraded to junk status the moment they demanded we copy Liz Truss’s disastrous tax policies, which wiped billions from the economy, endangered pension funds and pushed up mortgage interest rates.
“Official statistics show that thousands more people have moved from Tory-run England to SNP-run Scotland than vice versa in the last few years – and no wonder.
“Thanks to the SNP’s progressive tax decisions, the majority of people in Scotland pay less income tax than they would elsewhere in these islands, and average Scottish council tax bills are also hundreds of pounds lower than south of the border.”
In response to a freedom of information request filed by the Herald, the Scottish Government said that 280 of its 16,435 civil servants lived in England and that all 280 paid English tax rates.
Workers in Scotland who earn more than £28,850 pay more income tax than counterparts in the rest of the UK as a result of frozen thresholds and higher rates.
The average person earning £50,000 in Scotland pays £1500 more than their equivalent in England.
And last year, the Government introduced a new "advanced" incom2e tax rate aimed at high earners.
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The 45 per cent rate will apply to earnings between £75,000 and £125,140 from April.
But in England, people on those salaries will be taxed at 40 per cent in England.