Motion 5
Taxation and Public Sector Spending
“That this Congress acknowledges the challenging fiscal environment in Scotland, with high inflation, ongoing threat of recession, and funding squeezes across the public sector. However, it is clear that Scotland’s tax revenues are currently too low to fund consistently high-quality public services.
“Congress condemns the Scottish Government’s Council Tax and business rate freezes as they reduce the total potential funding for public services.
“Scotland continues to see rising wealth inequality, a cost-of-living crisis pushing more and more families into hardship, and persistently stubborn poverty levels. There can be no delay to addressing the funding crisis for all public services, as without them, the Scottish Government’s commitments to reducing poverty, and delivering on a more equal society cannot be achieved.
“Congress commends the STUC report ‘Raising taxes to deliver for Scotland’ which sets out proposals that, in the short run, could raise £1.1 billion in additional revenue to fund public services, largely through a more progressive income tax regime, but includes land, buildings, and landfill taxes. A further £2.6 billion could be raised through a package of longer term, more complex reforms to the tax system including wealth taxes, reform of Council Tax, business taxes, and various climate justice taxes.
“Congress therefore calls on:
- the Scottish Government to continue to increase its financial transparency;
- the General Council to maintain pressure on the Scottish Government to reform its approach to taxation, and to further utilise its tax raising powers to generate more revenue to better fund Scotland’s public services; and
- the General Council to continue to exert influence on the Scottish Government to use its devolved powers to introduce new and more progressive local taxation that targets business, polluters, and currently under-taxed wealth held in property, as proposed in the ‘Raising taxes to deliver for Scotland” report’.
Mover: Educational Institute of Scotland
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