| Accompanied by the prospective candidates for the Dundee East and West Westminster constituencies, Stewart Hosie and Joe FitzPatrick, Ms Sturgeon said the council tax was inherently unfair and hit hardest the people who could least afford to pay it.
She claimed a local income tax would be a much more equitable system based on people’s ability to pay.
Although acknowledging any new tax system would result in winners and losers, she said only those on “very high salaries” would pay more under the SNP’s proposals and significant numbers of people, including some pensioners, would be completely removed from the local tax system.
Ms Sturgeon said the blame for council tax increases lay not with local authorities, but with the Scottish Executive, both for sticking with the council tax and for failing to pass on to councils money allocated by Chancellor Gordon Brown to offset hikes in the tax.
She said there should be a “free and open debate” on the question of council boundaries.
The issue is of particular significance in Dundee and its neighbouring authorities of Angus and Perth and Kinross, as the administration in Dundee has long campaigned for areas like Monifieth and Invergowrie, now outside the city boundary, to be brought back.
However, that has provoked a furious reaction from the other two councils.
Ms Sturgeon said there was an argument for local government reorganisation, but she understood why people in an area like Angus, which had an SNP administration and was well run, would not be keen to transfer to Dundee.
Later in the day, Ms Sturgeon took the local income tax campaign to Tillicoultry, along with SNP prospective candidate for Ochil and South Perthshire, Annabelle Ewing. |
