Quote Originally Posted by grantzer View Post
Sorry, missed this..... I am going to use an example here, corporation tax is not really my thing,so if I pick an example which is wrong,it's the concept I am backing,not the particular example I use.....

The head office of macdonalds is where? Are they exempt from corporation tax in every other country in the world and only pay it where they have a head office?

The Barnett formula is your goto when you realise you are losing any argument,but let's see if we can sort out a replacement for it now. This will be pretty simple stuff,you should be able to follow it.

Taxation works like this,pretty much everywhere.

Government taxes people,or things. It collects x amount of money. It works out what it needs to run itself,then uses the rest as its pocket money.

The UK government does this( if we exclude the huge amount it borrows).

It does it with Scotland too,using the money from Scotland the same way it uses all its money.

So,Scotland raises x amount, the UK collects that,then the government takes off what it needs to pay for itself. What is left is spending money.

The UK needs some of that,for infrastructure,pensions,army,anything that is shared by each country in the UK,then sends the rest back to Scotland as the barnett formula.

Independence. This means we are a separate nation. We collect taxes the same way, don't send it to the UK, we just keep it here.

Now that sum of money has the amount of £0 going to pay for the UK government. Previously that amount would be more than that.

This would mean Scotland gets more money than now.

Obviously it would have it's own costs for infrastructure and so on,but as we are already paying our share as part of the UK, this amount should be roughly the same.

So if we use the figure of £100 just to keep it simple, £20 currently goes to pay for the UK government, £30 on costs, Scotland gets £50 back. Independent Scotland starts with £100,pays £30 in costs,keeps £70.

£70 is MORE than £50.

Now before anyone jumps down my throat,this is for Islay,so I kept it nice and simple.

And my views on independence have never changed, I don't care either way if it happens or not
My understanding is that the sum of all the taxes raised in Scotland, Vat, income tax, inheritance tax, national insurance both employer's and employee and corporation tax, is less than the amount of money that Holyrood gets by way of direct grant from Westminster. I don't think you are correct in saying that, today, Scotland raises more money in taxes than it gets back from Westminster. Note I said today. When North Sea oil was discovered it became clear that if Scotland could keep the revenue from the oil and gas, then the whole economic argument changed and with a different approach Scotland's Oil, could have been used for the exclusive benefit of Scotland, in the same way that Norway benefits even today. It was a fiddle, a gigantic fiddle, designed to deny the SNP the argument that Scotland should retain all North Sea revenues and unfortunately there is no way to correct that. We are where we are, and I don't think renewable energy sources will generate enough of a surplus to create a similar wealth fund for Scotland. The costs of creating renewable are being paid for by the energy users, and we can all see how paying more for energy takes money away from the individual. Somehow the green energy sources are now going up and up when we know that the cost of the wind is free!
I don't think there is a way for Scotland to become an independent country and be a small s socialist state.