Should Scotland introduce a mansion tax doubling council tax on homes over £2m?

Scotland's proposed new council tax bands for homes over £1m fall on the platform, but only just: 45% backed doubling the levy on £2m-plus properties, a 10-point gap that leaves this far from a rout. Given the sums involved run to thousands of pounds a year, that near-even split suggests genuine ambivalence rather than reflexive tax hostility.

The real story is age, not gender. Voters in their late 40s and 50s split 86% and 55% in favour, while the 25-34 bracket rejected the idea by two to one and every 16-24-year-old who voted said no. That is an odd inversion of the usual property-tax script, where it's typically the asset-rich older cohort resisting a levy on wealth they hold and the young cheering it on — here the pattern runs the other way, perhaps reflecting who actually expects to own a £2m house one day versus who is watching the parents' generation face a bigger bill.

Gender barely registers by comparison: men and women split almost identically, 41% and 44% in favour, a reminder that on a tax question this specific, age and asset exposure do more work than the usual demographic fault lines. The debate echoes the SNP's long-running struggle to reform council tax without reopening the mansion-tax rows that dogged Westminster a decade ago.

A government banking on intergenerational solidarity for this one may want to look again at the numbers.