Scottish Budget: What might it mean for you?

John Swinney is to outline the Scottish government's tax and spending plans for the next year as the country grapples with a cost of living crisis and soaring inflation.

Some of what the finance secretary announces could affect your take-home pay - while other decisions will have an impact on Scotland's public services.

BBC Scotland asked some of our experts what the key things to look out for in the budget could be.

At Westminster, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is freezing income tax thresholds while holding the rates steady. That is a substantial stealth tax on earners as their pay goes through these thresholds, and with inflation, many people are doing just that.

Not to freeze thresholds in Scotland would be a tax giveaway, relative to England at least. It would be difficult financially not to follow the Chancellor in doing that, and politically it would be odd not to take that more progressive approach.

Mr Hunt also reduced the threshold at which additional rate is paid at 45p for each extra pound earned. That is coming down from £150,000, which is the level it has been at for more than a decade, to just over £125,000. Again, it would be odd for the SNP, which levies that tax at a rate of 46p in the pound, not to do something similar.

For higher earners, Scotland already has a higher tax rate than the rest of the UK, by 1p in the pound. Mr Swinney could choose to raise that further. But higher tax, while household budgets are being squeezed by inflation, could harm efforts to return the economy to growth.

Other important decisions include council tax. Will Mr Swinney constrain the ability of councils to raise their tax bills, as he did for several years as finance secretary? While Green MSPs are pressing for major reform of council tax, there's a lot more talking before that happens.

Having missed seven of the last eleven targets on reducing emissions, the Scottish government's climate credentials are very much at stake in this budget.

Ministers took a major hammering last week from the Climate Change Committee which said there was no delivery plan for cutting harmful greenhouse gases and progress on delivery had stalled.

As campaigners will point out, time to act is rapidly running out with Holyrood legally committed to cutting emissions by 75% by 2030.

The response last week from ministers was that a climate change plan next year will set out its stall but that won't take effect until after 2030.

What the committee wants is an immediate ramping up of action and that costs money.

Green minister Patrick Harvie recently announced grants of up to £7,500 for people to install heat pumps which is a vital step away from heating our homes with gas.

But the budget for that - £42m - will only enable the conversion of 5,600 of the 2.67 million homes in Scotland.

So the cost of change is colossal and this will be the moment where we'll see if the first minister is prepared to put her money where her mouth is.

Health and social care receives by far the biggest share of the Scottish budget - £18bn last year - but the Audit Scotland public spending watchdog has consistently warned it is financially unsustainable.

There are so many competing interests for the money, from energy to heat 1,500 buildings to policy commitments such as funding a new National Care Service.

The cost of medicines and drugs last year was £2.7bn and there are ever-growing numbers of patients needing treatment.

But the highest spend is on staff at £8.6bn for 2020/2021 - £1bn more than the previous year.

The government has already made cuts in primary care, mental health and Covid spending to cover an increased pay offer to staff and strikes have so far been averted, unlike other parts of the UK.

But while some unions have accepted the new offer, others like the Royal College of Nursing are still consulting members and have threatened to strike.

With the need to recruit even more staff to meet demand the question for this budget will be what has to give to pay for it?

The plan for a new National Care Service would end the "postcode lottery" for social care, claims the Scottish government.

Others argue the proposals don't go far enough to address poor pay for carers and inequities in a system largely run for profit.

However the service ends up, concerns were raised by Holyrood's finance committee about a lack of clarity on the actual costs of delivering reform of Scotland's care sector by 2026.

Audit Scotland believes the Scottish government's cost predictions of £500m are "understated".

John Swinney now faces a choice of whether to spend tens of millions this year toward setting up the new service of tomorrow, or whether to hold that funding back for the problems of today.

That might include increasing support for the poorest families during the cost of living crisis, with many households struggling to cope with rising energy bills.

The Child Payment has already increased by 150% since its introduction last year and is claimed by nine out of 10 families who qualify for the benefit.

When it was extended to include under-16s two months ago, the avalanche of applications temporarily crashed the website.

With charity Child Poverty Action Group claiming that rising costs are still outstripping additional Holyrood support, Mr Swinney may choose to increase funding for families facing poverty.