Publisher:
Business for Scotland
Alternative Published Date
2022
Category:
Type of Resource:
Blog
Fast Facts
There is no set of accounts that tells us how an independent Scotland’s economy would fare, nor what its finances would look like. Not yet anyway.
More details
"The fact that GERS is a set of accounts for Scotland as a region of the UK, and not a separate nation, impacts on how the GERS figures are compiled. This is important to know for three key reasons:
- It means that multiple UK-wide costs are applied to Scotland’s expenditure in GERS which are not controlled by the Scottish Government. Therefore, many of the major expenditures reported in GERS are actually under the control of the UK Government.
- Those costs are nominally applied to Scotland’s GERS report as a population percentage of the UK’s expenditure. This happens regardless of where the expenditure was applied, which Government spent the money, and without any reference to where the economic benefit of any expenditure is accrued. Thus, Scotland’s costs are deliberately inflated and its true economic performance deflated.
- Several of the key revenues such as oil and gas taxation, corporation tax and VAT are controlled by the UK Government, which can make decisions that significantly lower or raise Scotland’s income without any reference to the Scottish Government."
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