Tories pledge tax cuts and more help for business – Daily Business

Russell Findlay: ‘we need to get Scotland working’ (pic: DB Media Services)

Scottish Conservatives have put income tax cuts and easing the cost of doing business at the heart of the party’s election manifesto.

Leader Russell Findlay would reduce income tax by raising the point at which workers start paying, creating one lower rate of 19% and ending the freeze on the higher-rate threshold.

The tax cuts would be paid for by the party’s pledge to rein in the SNP’s £7 billion benefits bill and cut government bureaucracy.

Mr Findlay says the plans are “comprehensive, costed and credible” and the most detailed ever produced by the Scottish Conservatives.

“We need to get Scotland working after almost two dismal decades of SNP incompetence, failure and scandal,” he will say a the manifesto launch in Edinburgh.

“Things do not have to be this bad. The mess that Scotland is in is the result of the wrong political choices made by SNP administrations.

“Our manifesto shows there can be a different way – a brighter, more prosperous way for everyone.

“A lower-tax Scotland, where people can keep and spend more of the money they graft for. A booming Scotland, where businesses can thrive. A functioning Scotland, generating the revenue we need to create infrastructure and public services fit for the 21st Century.”

Mr Findlay says John Swinney will use an SNP majority “to press ahead with his plan to hold a second, unwanted, divisive referendum on breaking up our country. We cannot allow him to plunge the next parliament into constitutional chaos.”

The Conservatives have called for every new government policy to pass a ‘growth test’, lower business rates and the creation of Growth Scotland that would bring together the development agencies and the Scottish National Investment Bank.

The party also wants to abolish Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) on primary residences and build 80,000 affordable homes over the lifetime of the next Scottish Parliament.

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