…if I may make a comment…about the lose of the Barnett formula, I would say – from a purely accountancy viewpoint – that, although Scotland would no longer have the Barnett formula, that loss may be offset, as Scotland would get all tax revenues raised in Scotland (Scotland would no longer contribute to UK budget) which would be collected by a new Scottish tax authority, and it would get all the oil revenues corresponding to its share (one would need to know how much of such revenues currently goes to the UK budget..); additionally, all sales by Scottish companies, which currently reach the EU via England, could become Scottish export. In fact, in the event of independence, nothing would prevent Scots products – which are currently shipped to EU countries from English seaports, and which currentlly would not count as Scottish export toward the EU – from being sent to the EU direcly from Scotland.
I mean that any estimate would need to accurately take into account: a) at the level of a new Scottish State, both what Scotland would lose and what Scotland would earn, i.e. both side of a double-entry booking (therefore, it would not be accurate to assume that a Scottish State budget would start with a 9% deficit or more; here, a detailed estimate of all new revenue sources would be necessary to come to a reliable calculation); the latest estimate that I have read in a document of the UK Parliament (http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06625/SN06625.pdf, at page 8) states that, even after all revenues raising power deriving from the Scotland Act 2016 come into force, the Scottish Parliament will only get 50% of its budget from devolved and assigned taxes, so that the Barnett formula is obviously important, but it is so in the context of the current constitutional framework, where all personal income tax and corporate income tax, even if raised in Scotland, are centrally collected by HMRC and not by a Scottish tax authority, and where the Scottish Government only gets, through HMRC, the portion corresponding to the “Scottish Rate of Income Tax”, not to mention VAT); b) at the level of trade accounts and thus of Scottish export (which would generate taxable profits of businesses having tax residence in Scotland), one would need to consider all duty-free export that would directly go from Scotland to the single market (without the need to cross England for transit).
In my view, all this would need to be considered – from a strictly accountancy viewpoint – to get an accurate estimate of what would be the “starting deficit” (if any) of a new Scottish State.
For the rest, the scenario of the UK divorce appears to be heading toward a “bad divorce” from the EU, and continued UK dutry-free access to the single market could not be taken for granted. E.g., in a hypothetical scenario where the financial passport would no longer be available to financial institutions based in the UK, but would be available to financial institutions based in a new indy Scotland (at least) within the EEA , it would be reasonable to expect substantial inward investments in Scotland. Admittedly, these are hypothesis, but asserting that a Scottish budget would start from a 9% deficit is also an hypothesis..for the reasons above indicated