| Comment | Again, it entirely depends on your counterfactual.
> we'd just get the block (Barnett) grant paid out of exchequer receipts from the whole of the UK, right?
...being the key point. Had devolution of taxation not occurred, would the pre-devolution Barnett formula still be in place? Extremely debatable.
> and the burden on lower earners is at most £21 less per year.
But the progressive tax arrangements also include higher-rate payers subsidising e.g. the Scottish Child Payment, which essentially acts as relief to lower-income households.
So again, you can't really assess any of this in isolation - you need to consider the full distributional effects of the devolved budget in total. In absolute revenue terms, it really makes little difference as everything roughly balances out - all it really comes down to is whether you are for or against a more progressive system than the UK average. |
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