PHILIP Hammond's Budget must be putting Nicola Sturgeon in a right tizzy (“No-frills Budget challenges SNP to cut growing tax gap”, The Herald, November 23).

Scotland is already the highest taxed part of the UK with higher income tax levels, and Land and Buildings Transaction Tax rates so high as to create a property shortage and sharply push up prices. Seemingly dependent on the Greens to pass her own budget, until Wednesday's UK Budget it appeared likely Ms Sturgeon would do as Patrick Harvie demands and increase income tax rates even more, beginning with those earning more than £24,000.

But stamp duty has now been massively cut south of the Border, plus income tax rates have been reduced yet further.

Ms Sturgeon's last income tax initiative means more than 500,000 of us pay more tax for the privilege of living under the nationalists. If she proceeds with even a version of Mr Harvie's latest requirements, massively more will see their take-home pay cut. The First Minister claims this is necessary to maintain public services, despite the Barnett Formula enabling more than £1,300 per person per year to be spent on public services in Scotland. What's Ms Sturgeon doing with our money?

Martin Redfern,

Woodcroft Road, Edinburgh.

ONE question asked repeatedly by the BBC to the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, gets to the heart of the Budget debate; eight times he was asked how much a Labour government would spend on interest on their extra borrowing, and eight times he avoided answering.

There are other important questions that Mr McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn and their colleagues will be rather reluctant to answer. For example: how much would they borrow, how big a deficit are they prepared to run, and how long before Britain defaulted on its sovereign debt?

But the really difficult one that they can’t answer is: has there ever been an economically successful socialist government, or do they, as Margaret Thatcher famously said, always run out of other people’s money?

And so we are left with the depressing choice between a dismal Tory Chancellor and a disastrous Labour alternative.

Otto Inglis,

6 Inveralmond Grove, Edinburgh.

WEDNESDAY'S Budget was vindictive and spiteful. It was a well-laid minefield to cut the power of the SNP Gvernment at Holyrood.

It stank of "you lost the Referendum and we will do what we like with Scotland".

The Tories in England through English votes for English Laws (Evel), managed to change the rules on VAT for Highways England and academy schools, and there was no consultation with Scottish MPs. In 2011 unified police forces were all the rage in the Tory manifesto, but again Scotland was punished.

It also showed the Scottish Tories in a bad light as they appear not to know what is a devolved issue and what is retained to Westminster. This is even more proof that Scottish Tories lack the ability to take control of Holyrood and govern.

We received £2 billion with £1.1bn of it already spent, and it has to be paid back in four years. Even the Fraser of Allander Institute supported the SNP by saying it was a cut of as much as £240 million. It's strange how the magic money tree could find money to keep the DUP sweet, and suddenly there is £40bn for the EU, and the Tories have also said there is £2.5bn for farmers' subsides up to 2020.

As for the tax relief and investment in oil fields, is it money well spent? During the Scottish independence referendum the oil was running out, but now it would appear there is that much it's worth investing in.

I consider this Budget just to be the start of something more sinister that could occur after our withdrawal from the European Union.

Robert McCaw,

6 Hamilton Crescent, Renfrew.

SO, if the Conservative Party fails to beat the SNP at the ballot box, they resort to subterfuge in an attempt to upstage them.

The Conservatives stoop to a new low level when they themselves had decreed that the creation of a single police authority for Scotland would mean a 20 per cent VAT charge on its services, and likewise for the fire service, and, having argued against pleas from the SNP to overturn the ruling, with vehement objections coming from Conservative quarters, the Tories now commit a U-turn in the Budget by agreeing to cease the practice from April 2018.

And it is constitutional corruption for them to claim that it was the remonstrations from the paltry 13 Conservative MPs at Westminster who had convinced them to make the change, having decried the SNP claim that they had pleaded on 140 occasions for the ditching of the policy. On BBC Radio Scotland, a junior Treasury minister stated that the SNP had not made one approach to the Treasury for a change – he, and political commentators who ran with that story, did not realise that SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford’s challenges to Prime Minister Theresa May had greater status, as her official title is First Lord of the Treasury.

My challenge to Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is to identify for me where her reneging on the police VAT policy can be found in her last Westminster manifesto?

“Subterfuge” is the term that applies also to Holyrood’s tax powers. The increased powers were promulgated by a Conservative Government. Why is it, therefore, that they spit blood when the SNP dares only to table a proposition for the topic to be discussed, leading to a Scottish parliamentary decision to be reached – not solely by the SNP, which does not have a majority, but by the parliament as a whole? Where in the relevant Scotland Act does it decree that the level of taxation in Scotland should not differ, up or down, from that applying in England?

Douglas R Mayer,

76 Thomson Crescent, Currie, Midlothian.

THE Budget is nothing more than the usual smoke and mirrors that Chancellors use to kid us all on that they are a safe pair of hands looking after our money. I wonder if Philip Hammond is a fully paid-up member of the Magic Circle?

Max Cruickshank,

13 Iona Ridge, Hamilton.