Tax the rich to fund services
The Scottish Government must be honest about the tax changes required to meet its aim of eradicating child poverty, says Scottish Green Co-leader Ross Greer.
He has called on the First Minister to ‘come clean’ about the need for the very wealthy and big polluters to pay more in tax if the Scottish Government is to avoid financial catastrophe without cutting the public services relied on by struggling children and families.
Speaking ahead of the Tax Justice Scotland event on ‘Talking Tax: The Role of Tax in a Fairer and Greener Scotland’, Ross has predicted that tax will be one of the defining issues of next year’s election and that all parties must be honest about who will need to pay to tackle child poverty and fund public services.
His call comes after years of warnings from financial watchdogs that Scotland’s current balance of tax and spending cannot be sustained.
In addition, a new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has made clear that the Scottish Government is set to miss its targets for reducing child poverty by a wide margin, unless there is far higher spending on areas such as childcare and social security.
The Scottish Greens co-leader will argue at the conference that balancing the books without gutting public services will mean building on the tax reforms targeting the wealthiest already introduced by the Greens.
These recent changes include higher income taxes for top earners, and removing the cap on council tax charges for second and empty homes and doubling the additional charge paid by those buying extra properties like holiday homes. Combined, they raise more than £2 billion per year for services like the NHS and schools.
A recent Scottish Government report revealed that the richest 2% have more wealth than half of Scotland’s population, with the richest 10% nearly 200 times wealthier than the 10% least well off.
Ross said:
“Scotland’s public finances just don’t add up. Unless we change course, we’re heading towards disaster for essential services like our NHS and schools.
“Protecting those services and making progress on our shared mission to eradicate child poverty will depend on taxing the super-rich and big polluters. It’s time for the First Minister to come clean and be honest about that.
“The Scottish Greens are certainly clear about how we would do it, with proposals like a mansion tax on the purchase of million pound homes, far higher taxes on overseas owners who hoard land and property in Scotland just to make a profit and ending the tax breaks exploited by the super-rich and big corporations.
“Unfortunately, other parties run a mile from this reality, arguing simultaneously for tax cuts and increased public spending. That’s just downright dishonest.
“Scotland’s super-rich are sitting on vast fortunes. They can and must be made to pay their fair share.
“Scotland will never be the fairer, greener country that I know we can be if a small number of people are allowed to continue hoarding more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes.
“The choice we face is between continued child poverty and cuts to public services or taking on the super-rich and building a better Scotland for everyone.”