This piece by Richie Venton, SSP national trade union organiser, first appeared as an exclusive report in the National (15/09/2026). It is major new calculation which displays the true potential of the SSP’s flagship ‘Scottish Service Tax’ policy.
Imagine the impact of an extra £3billion being invested in local jobs, wages and frontline services in one year!
Sheer fantasy, you might think? On the contrary, that’s what could have been done in the financial year 2023-4 if the SNP government had kept its 2007 election manifesto promise, abolished the hated Council Tax, and replaced it with the progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax, as advocated by the Scottish Socialist Party for well over 25 years.
Brand new calculations – based on the latest available government data on incomes from wages, self-employment and pensions – make for startling reading. And a sledge-hammer condemnation of the choices made by those political parties busy butchering workers’ wages, jobs and frontline services – including the Scottish government and SNP/Scottish Green alliance in Glasgow city council.
New Scottish Service Tax Figures
Detailed analysis of HMRC figures proves that in 2023-4, whereas £2.8billion was collected in Council Tax across Scotland, the SSP’s Scottish Service Tax would have raised a whopping £5.83billion for local jobs and services.
Yes, three thousand million pounds in additional funds for Scotland’s 32 councils, which could be poured into elderly and disabled people’s care; schools; cleansing services; youth facilities; housebuilding and renovation; workers’ wages; equal pay without detriment to any worker’s wage; upkeep of parks, play areas, cycle-paths and streets; district heating schemes to slash bills; free public transport networks, etc.
And that’s on top of the extra £2.6billion which our previous calculations proved could have been raised the year before, in 2022-3.
A Ready Made Solution to Cuts
It’s an immediately realisable alternative, completely within the powers of devolution. A ready-made solution to the financial meltdown facing Scotland’s public services… and supported by a growing number of trade unions!
Instead of slaughtering workers’ wages, slashing jobs, shutting down older people’s daycare centres and charging ever-more in Council Tax for rapidly declining services, the lives of millions could be transformed.
A Progressive Tax
The added beauty of our alternative is that it’s overwhelmingly the very richest handful of the population who would be obliged to cough up most of the funding to transform everyday life for millions.
The Scottish Service Tax (SST) is based on the ability to pay, with six income bands and rising rates of taxation. That’s what used to be called a progressive tax, a concept which seems to have fallen out of fashion among our overpaid politicians.
1.5 Million Would Pay Nothing!
Under the SSP’s system, the first £12,570 of earnings would be zero-rated, in keeping with the lowest income tax threshold. That alone would exempt 1.5 million people from paying a single penny, because they are already struggling to survive.
The next income bracket (£12,570 to £30,000) would be taxed at 4.5%, then 10% on that part of earnings between £30,000 and £50,000… and so on, culminating in a 20% tax rate on all earnings above £100,000.
Without bamboozling readers with all the statistics, let me hammer home the simple fact that this would redistribute wealth and simultaneously vastly boost community resources.
Making the Very Richest Handful Pay Up
The very richest 16,000 adults in Scotland – barely enough to fill a mid-table Scottish premiership stadium – who enjoy average incomes of £445,000, would be charged an average SST bill of £61,000 each… and contribute nearly £1billion between them.
The richest 219,000 Scottish citizens (that’s far less than 5% of all adults) would have to pay £3billion out of the total £5.8billion raised nationally.
Most Workers Would Pay Less… For Better Services!
By stark contrast, a worker earning £25,000 – like many of the Glasgow council workers facing pay cuts of £2-3,000 – would only pay £559 in Service Tax, instead of the £1,706 Council Tax bill for a typical, modest, Band D house (£2,358 when water and sewage charges are included).
A worker on £35,000 would still only be billed for £1,284… but an MSP (salary £77,711) would have to pay £7,172 towards the upkeep of local services.
And the £209,472 salary enjoyed by Glasgow city council’s unelected chief executive would mean them paying £33,000 in Scottish Service Tax!
SNP, Labour, and Greens Lack Bottle!
Why in hell don’t the SNP, Labour and the allegedly radical Greens adopt this straightforward but far-reaching measure to boost jobs, services and protect workers from the crimes of wage discrimination and cruel job insecurity for millions?
Why do they instead fiddle about with reviews and sham consultations, after 20 years of breaking their promise to replace the regressive Council Tax?
Frankly, because they don’t have the bottle or vision to challenge the pelf and privileges of the grotesquely rich, and instead tinker round the edges of a system that is rotten to the core – throwing thousands of workers and communities to the wolves as they slash wages, jobs and services we depend on for a half-civilised society.
SNP Programme for Cuts
Witness the choices made in the SNP’s Programme for Government – which should be re-branded ‘Programme for Cuts’.
Instead of implementing the SNP’s 2007 election pledge to abolish the Council Tax, they plan two new higher bands for properties valued over £1million. The government’s own figures admit that will raise a piddling £12m-£16m across 32 councils – an empty gesture, not even due for implementation until 2028.
Up to 20,000 jobs face the chop. Reductions to public spending cascades down to councils, colleges and health boards – all already in financial meltdown.
Instead of taxing the very rich and mounting a serious struggle to win back some of the billions robbed off Scotland by successive Westminster governments, John Swinney’s administration capitulates to austerity and tries to fill the predicted £4.7billion black hole from the pockets of workers and provision of services.
Carnage in Glasgow by SNP and Greens
Witness the carnage in Scotland’s biggest city, where SNP and Scottish Green Party councillors combined forces – as they’ve done every year in cuts-making budgets – and voted to deprive thousands of workers of the compensation they deserve for 20 years of Labour-imposed wage discrimination, and usher in a Pay and Grading System with pay cuts for over 2,500 workers.
Council workers are leaving meetings in tears and despair, many going off sick with stress, after being told how many thousands of pounds their wages will be cut by.
Parking attendants have said: “Staff are losing £3,500 a year despite bringing in over £26million to the council and facing daily physical and verbal abuse… I have personally been punched, pushed, spat on and screamed at. I have had people try to run over me. This is the thanks we get.”
Workers in ASSIST, the domestic abuse support unit – mostly women, some of them single parents, many of them survivors of domestic abuse themselves – stand to lose £11,500, fearing loss of their homes and of £40,000 being wiped off their pensions.
It’s About Cutting the Wage Bill, NOT About Equal Pay!
Workers in cleansing, school support, janitorial, care and other critical services face cuts of £2,000 to £3,500.
By ugly contrast, some senior managers are getting a pay hike of £26,000… more than many earn in a year; blatantly buying the loyalty of top managers, as the ruling SNP/Greens wield the knife to workers’ wages.
This is not about implementing equal pay; it’s a crusade to slash the wage bill, in a council that faces a budget gap of £110million this year, according to the Accounts Commission.
YES – THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE!
With the declarations of cavernous funding gaps at Scottish government and local authority levels, is there no alternative?
Of course there is; the Scottish Service Tax is fully calculated and costed, ready to go, easily applied to the existing HMRC records on people’s incomes.
It only needs a party with the political will to tax the rich, raise an extra £3bn in one year alone, wipe out the devastation being imposed on workers’ lives and community facilities, and end 20 years of broken promises to axe the Council Tax with an alternative that redistributes wealth from the grotesquely rich to the rest of us. That’s what the SSP offers.
Join the fight for the Scottish Service Tax! Join the SSP