Paul Hutcheon at the Sunday Herald delved into the employment habits of MSPs at the weekend, highlighting that 50 out of 129 employ a close relative.
I don't have a problem with this in principle, as long as the employee is actually earning their crust. My feeling on this is that quite often there is no work being done to speak of, but salary is still diverted into their bank account.
I would imagine that this is pretty much the same state of affairs as Westminster. As an adjunct to this I also note that the Treasury has responded to the Arctic Systems case by saying it will now enact legislation to effectively stop small companies from "income splitting". This is the practice of a business run by one spouse paying themselves a salary up to the 40% tax limit, and then paying their spouse who does not actually do any work for the business thereby allowing them to use their 22% tax band too. This effectively allows them to take out over £70,000 from a company a year at more or less the 22% level where normally this would fall under the higher rate.
Parliamentarians are also getting away with this with the rules on staff salaries. If they're going to pay their spouses for doing nowt, then at least make them pay at the 40% level for augmenting their income. It would be good to see the government set an example by first clamping down on Parliamentarians.
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