Tax on aspiration

We now have a proposed tax on house-buyers under which Scottish house purchasers will be worse off than those south of the Border, with the tax bill for a £300,000 home £2300 more than in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, rising to nearly £5,000 for properties sold for £350,000.

Nicola Sturgeon’s attempt to justify this by claiming that the housing market is different in Scotland compared to England is another muddying of waters at which the SNP are adept.

Obviously the housing market varies widely across the whole of the UK, with hot spots and poor areas everywhere.

The fact remains that on like-for-like house prices Scots purchasers are going to be very much worse off than those south of the Border. This extra cost is not money that can be added to a mortgage, it will have to be paid out of the purchaser’s cash, limiting the amount they will have for a deposit and whatever they require to spend on the cost of furniture and refurbishment.

It is a tax on the aspiration of people to own their own home and to progress up the housing ladder and is typical of the policies of this doctrinaire government.

Donald Lewis

Beech Hill

Gifford, East Lothian

Jim Sillars promised a day of retribution against No supporters, and John Swinney’s punitive 10 per cent tax on housing transactions between £250,000 and £1m fulfils that pledge.

In England the tax will be 5 per cent but in the spring, Edinburgh and East Lothian, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, St Andrews and the East Neuk of Fife will be hit with 10 per cent.

These are areas where the average house price is not far off £250,000 and where middle class owners were, unsurprisingly, fiercely opposed to Alex Salmond’s leap-in-the-dark.

Nicola Sturgeon vowed to govern for “all of Scotland” but this class-war tax and her attack on the property rights of estate owners shows the cynical reality of that pledge.

Dr John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews