SNP ministers should “pause” further increases to income tax on higher earners in next month’s Scottish Budget amid evidence that previous rises backfired by generating less revenue, economists have warned.

Increases in Scotland’s top rate of income tax may have “reduced revenues”, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has suggested.

The IFS says the raised tax has affected the reduction of work, increasing avoidance or evasion of tax, and has

Scotland’s tax raid on top earners may have lost Holyrood money, new analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests. The leading think tank has said that rather than boosting the country’s coffers,