The Scottish government will unveil its case for independence at 10am today. Already the Treasury is warning that voting ‘yes’ next autumn would cost the average basic rate tax payer an additional £1,000 in tax increases. Danny Alexander is also trying to undermine the SNP’s claim that fiscal problems initially experienced by a newly independent Scotland would be overcome through increased growth. In a letter to Alex Salmond, Alexander writes:
‘I was surprised to hear that the very next day the Scottish government proposed cuts to tax rates in the event of independence. Your Finance Secretary explained that an independent Scotland’s fiscal problems would be fixed through additional growth. Treasury officials calculate that, all else equal, an independent Scotland would need to grow at almost 2% more than the UK for the next 50 years to get back to the IFS’s projection for the UK’s debt position. No European country has managed the required average growth rate over the last 50 years.’
Today’s independence paper is supposed to set out the rational, rather than emotional, arguments for independence.
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