Kate Forbes sounds alarm over tax hike as Humza Yousaf eyes increases for wealthy Scots

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A defeated SNP leadership candidate has warned First Minister Humza Yousaf against further tax rises.Kate Forbes said hikes would damage growth and shrink the number of taxpayers at a time when the country’s finances are in difficulty.Yousaf narrowly defeated Forbes for the SNP leadership after running on a centre-left platform.He has backed higher income tax for the better off and his Government is consulting on rises to council tax.Householders with gas boilers could also be hit in the pocket, while in Glasgow the SNP administration is charging polluting cars for coming into the city.In a column in the National on net zero, Forbes wrote that it would be “dreadfully unfair” for “hard-pressed workers” to pay for new boilers and new cars.She wrote: “The danger is that, in the transition, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.”In a coded dig at Yousaf, she also wrote: “There are some who think that raising taxes exponentially or complicating the system further will somehow get us out of the hole of difficult public finances.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as proven by history and most expert analyses.“I don’t advocate unfairly low rates of taxation either.

We have a moral duty to support progressive forms of taxation, whereby the rich pay more and the poorer pay less.“But I do know that raising taxes exponentially high stymies economic growth, shrinks the number of taxpayers and altogether results in less public finance.

It’s short-termist when we need long-term vision.“It might fill a few potholes next year but it fails to recognise we need to build entirely new roads to net zero.”She said the alternative is to go for growth and work with the private sector: “By maximising the opportunities for our economy