SCOTLAND needs a grown-up conversation about tax. For too long, people of various political ideologies have used slogans and faulty logic to obscure fundamental problems. We’ve been left with public-sector cuts, and private affluence only for those at the very top. Now, politicians are at least admitting the problems. The case for higher taxes has been accepted by almost everyone in Holyrood – only the Conservatives are clinging on to the low-tax fantasy. Scotland’s political leaders now need to show the courage to come clean about the true extent of the problems.

The Scottish Parliament now has new tax powers, and we need to use them for the public good. Too often, centrist and right-wing politicians love to promise better public services for less money. They’ve been doing it for decades, for obvious reasons: something for nothing is a vote winner. But dig behind this talk of more with less, of “modernisation” and “efficiency savings”, and you’ll find hard-pressed staff doing twice the job for lower pay.

Workers in HMRC haven’t had a pay rise for the best part of a decade, and now they’re facing massive job losses and office closures, with 90 per cent of offices across Scotland and the rest of the UK scheduled to close.

Let’s be honest: there are real, hard limits to the austerity logic of make do and mend. And ultimately, it’s the public who lose out. Despite endless talk of so-called inefficiency, the public sector provides services we can’t do without at bargain-basement prices. That benefits everyone, even employers.

Compare our health system, though still suffering cuts, to America’s private model. Per person, Americans spend £6,311 on health care, compared to £2,777 per person over here. And Americans live shorter lives! People aren’t contributing taxes because they believe in socialist ideology, but instead because managing costs in common leads to massive personal savings overall.

Some people still resent paying taxes, even if they don’t admit it, hence the “shy Tory”. When I see billions squandered on Trident, even I have a grumble. But anyone tempted by talk of “lifting the burden” should think twice: generally, you’ll suffer down the line. Listen to the charlatan who’s offering tax cuts and fairly soon they’ll be flogging the railways, and we’re paying the most expensive fares in Europe – five times dearer than socialised systems on the continent – or privatising energy, with equally dire consequences.

In Britain, we’ve reached the limits of selling off the family silver. There’s no easy, voter-friendly road out now. The question is how we’re

going to raise the revenue, and who is going to pay. Both left and right can be guilty of oversimplification. Socialists tend to imagine that taxing “the rich” will solve all the problems. Much depends on what we mean by the rich. It’s unpopular to admit it, but, to fund public services properly, middle-income earners will need to pay more too. The poorest, especially those earning less than £20,000, must be sheltered from tax rises, but everyone else needs to accept a fair burden, or we’ll be caught between exploiting workers in declining services or the short-term fix of partial privatisation, which comes at an ultimate heavy cost.

The Scottish Government, until recently, put forward the centre-right argument on tax, claiming that rich people are overburdened and would simply avoid new taxes. More taxes means less revenue, was the claim. This drew on well-intentioned research, but accepting this logic leads inexorably to some deeply dubious conclusions. To go on tax strike because the elected government wants you to contribute more is, at best, deeply unpatriotic. At worst, it’s criminal activity – or it should be. If working-class people were as intent as the super-rich on defrauding the government, the tabloids would be outraged, inquisitions would be called for, ATOS would be given bumper contracts to impose humiliating assessments, and, ultimately, the worst offenders would be jailed and shamed in scandal rags.

But when the respectable upper classes set out systematically to damage the fabric of government, it becomes simply an inevitable statistic. As inevitable, I’m tempted to say, as death and … some other certain thing. Undoubtedly there are upper-middle-class people who feel deeply aggrieved at paying more tax to save actual tax workers, gallery assistants, teachers and dinner ladies from the chop. Maybe some will move away in a huff, like characters from an Ayn Rand novel. But do we really think this is acceptable behaviour? When does pragmatism become a cheaters’ charter?

According to the Tax Justice Network, there’s somewhere between $21trillion and $32trn laundered through tax havens every year. This ranges from formally legal to seriously criminal. British Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories like the Virgin Islands are among the worst offenders. Governments around the world are absolutely complicit in this, and Britain is currently sacking thousands of tax collectors while filling jails with working-class folk guilty of petty crimes.

Western governments must escape this race to the bottom on taxes. We’ve spent decades competing to offer generous benefits to the relatively wealthy: let’s not forget that the wealthiest of all, the bankers, were bailed out at enormous public expense. It’s time someone had the courage to move in the opposite direction.

If Scotland truly believes in social democracy, it will be a leader, not a follower. The tax system isn’t some royal road to socialism, and higher taxes aren’t radical proposals, even if radicals should support them. Instead taxes are just a necessary, boring mechanism for funding decent public services, which ultimately saves everyone money, including companies.

Cuts, underfunding and bare-bones taxation provide short-term boosts to personal and political fortunes, but they quickly lead to medium-term decay, for everyone. It’s time to step up, and pay up.