Consultation outcome

Programme for reducing and consolidating published Official Statistics content

Updated 27 May 2021

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) needs to prioritise the resource we spend on statistical publications. This consultation document explains our thoughts on how we can balance the growth in recent priority productions such as Real Time Information and COVID-19 statistics with our limited resources.

We need to understand how you use these statistics so that we can prioritise products which are important to our users. We look forward to receiving your comments.

1. Background

In October, HMRC published an initial consultation indicating our intention to reduce the volume of statistical products currently produced in order to focus on the quality of these statistics.

This forms part of our work to respond to the review by Ed Humpherson, Director General for Regulation at the UK Statistics Authority, Strengthening the quality of HMRC’s official statistics published on 30 April 2020.

HMRC has a limited resource to produce statistics. Recently, HMRC has developed some new, high-profile statistical releases including monthly statistics on COVID-19 schemes, such as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and Self-Employment Income Support Scheme, which has added to the demands on the statistical teams.

So that we can sustain publication of our new COVID-19 statistics, and in response to Ed Humpherson’s recommendations it is critical that we review and adapt our approach.

The aims of the reduction plans are to ensure that HMRC:

• continues to produce useful and relevant statistics for use by our stakeholders
• adapts statistics publications to reduce what we produce for those which are no longer widely used, or are duplicated elsewhere, or could be produced less frequently

This will bring about benefits that improve the coherence and relevance of our statistics including

• making the user experience of our statistics better by reducing some of the general and statistical content that is of little value to users
• doing more to understand our data sources and publishing relevant materials for users
• streamlining production and quality assurance processes
• modernising our statistical outputs to make the best use of the latest software and tools available
• presenting statistics more comprehensively, by consolidating separate bulletins together, for example on pensions and savings

We propose to make changes to about a third of our statistics publications and would like to receive comments on our plans from users of these statistics. The plans are set out in this note for each of the publications affected, grouped according to the type of change proposed.

If you want to comment on or make suggestions on the proposals or the programme more generally, please contact [email protected], making sure to reference the publications to which you are referring where appropriate. We will review all feedback we receive and publish a consultation response, setting out confirmed plans, later in the year.

2. Proposed work

2.1 Publications to be discontinued

Capital taxes 

We propose to discontinue the Personal Wealth statistics publication. The Office for National Statistics regularly publishes information on total wealth from its Wealth and Assets Survey which provides much better information on the total wealth in the UK, and wealth inequality.  

Income Tax statistics 

We propose to discontinue the Income Tax receipts publication. This is due to the duplication between this publication and our existing HMRC tax receipts and National Insurance contributions for the UK publication.

The tax receipts publication now provides commentary on changes in receipts reducing the need for a separate Income Tax publication. Stopping production of the Income Tax receipts publication will also enable the development of better statistics in other releases using the Survey of Personal Incomes. 

We propose to discontinue the Tax structure and parameter statistics publication, which gives historic Income Tax and National Insurance (NI) rates and allowances. This is due to the duplication between this release and information published as separate guidance by HMRC on GOV.UK.

Commentary on the impact of changes to Income Tax and NI rates and allowances will be provided in our other statistical publications on these taxes and contributions, principally the Income Tax liabilities publication. 

We propose to discontinue the separate commentary document that accompanies the Personal incomes statistics (regional analysis) – tables 3.12 to 3.15 publication. This is due to the limited added value of this additional commentary document.

The data tables themselves will continue to be published, and the main commentary document will continue to be published. These changes will be implemented in the 2021 release. 

Child and Working Tax Credits

HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) are working on a strategy which will support statistics users’ understanding of changes within the statistics data both departments publish as a result of the migration of tax credits customers to Universal Credit. We expect to update users on this strategy in the summer.

Due to the decrease in data coverage as tax credits customers move across to Universal Credit, the data on tax credits customers has become less reliable, specifically at sub-regional levels of geography. Because of this we intend to discontinue the Child and Working Tax Credits statistics: small area data and Child and Working Tax Credits statistics: supplement on payments.

VAT

We propose merging the VAT bulletin into an existing publication called VAT Annual Statistics and discontinuing the quarterly VAT bulletin. This will provide savings on production resources. This publication would be discontinued from April 2021.

2.2 Consolidation of publications

Pension statistics 

We propose to combine the separate Flexible payments from pensions and the Annual pension contributions by contribution type into the Personal and stakeholder pension statistics so that this will be the only annual publication on pensions.  

This means the frequency of statistics on Flexible payments from pensions will be reduced from quarterly to annual, and will be included in the main September release. The change to Annual pension contributions by contribution type is largely administrative; these statistics are already released at the same time with the Personal and stakeholder pension statistics.

The Qualifying Registered Overseas Pension Schemes (QROPS) statistics will be discontinued as a separate publication, with key information on the annual number of transfers and corresponding value of transfers included in HMRC’s Pension Schemes Services newsletters from July 2021.

By introducing one combined publication we intend to provide more holistic and coherent coverage to users, and use this to provide more topical coverage on pensions. These changes will be carried out in the September 2021 release. 

Savings products statistics 

We propose to introduce a new Annual Savings Products statistics publication. This will combine the content of our separate Individual Savings Account (ISA) statistics, and Help to Save statistics into one publication.  

By introducing one combined publication we intend to provide more holistic and coherent coverage to users, and use this to provide more topical coverage on savings products. In the 2021 release we do not intend to make any changes to the content of the statistics, and will consult with users appropriately on any future changes.  

The new Annual Savings Products publication will be one annual release in May each year. This represents a delay to the ISA statistics publication from April to May, and a delay in the Help to Save statistics from February to May, and the separate Help to Save statistics release in August being discontinued.  

Child and Working Tax Credits

As part of the HMRC and DWP joint strategy detailed above, we are looking to provide a more coherent set of tax credits statistics. This may include combining Child and Working Tax Credits statistics: provisional awards statistics with Child and Working Tax Credits statistics: finalised awards statistics to create an annual release published each summer. We will develop this proposal and will update users in summer 2021. As a consequence, Child and Working Tax Credits statistics: provisional awards, due to be published in February this year will be the last release produced at this time of year.

Environment

We propose to introduce a new Environmental bulletin. This will combine the content of the Aggregates Levy bulletin, the Landfill Tax bulletin and the Climate Change Levy and Carbon Price Floor bulletin to create an annual publication. This will give users a more overarching and coherent view of environmental taxes and will save resource by eliminating duplication of similar processes, as well as the resource saved by a shift to an annual publication. We propose publishing this new environmental publication in June 2021.

2.3 Reduction in frequency of publications

Air Passenger Duty bulletin

We propose reducing the Air Passenger Duty bulletin from every 6 months to an annual publication. This will allow resource to be prioritised to improving the content and value of the publication.

Provisionally the new date proposed for this publication is July, whereas the publication is currently produced in April and October. Moving to a summer date will allow for full financial year statistics to be published earlier. In 2021, the April bulletin will be produced as normal, followed by a July bulletin in 2022 to begin the new sequence.

Hydrocarbon Oils bulletin

We propose reducing the Hydrocarbon Oils bulletin from quarterly to 6-monthly. This will allow resource to be prioritised to improving the content and value of the publication. This change is proposed to be achieved by dropping the June and December publications, meaning statistics will continue to be produced in March and September.

2.4 Reduction in coverage of publications

Capital taxes 

We propose to reduce the coverage in the Inheritance Tax statistics publication. The main changes are:

• we will no longer update Table 12.7 on trusts by value due to its overlap with Table 12.8
• we will no longer update Table 12.11 on Inheritance Tax by Local Administrative Units, due to the overlap with Tables 12.10 and 12.12
• we will no longer update Table 12.5, and will remove the asset breakdowns in Table 12.6, which are provided in 12.4. Table 12.6 will be remodelled to present the information in one table only
• we will increase coverage in some tables to provide further disaggregation of some bands, subject to this not being disclosive. This will enable users to gain a better understanding of the underlying data distribution

These changes will be implemented in the 2021 release. 

Benefits in kind statistics 

The coverage of the Benefits in kind statistics publication is now focussed on company cars rather than the wider range of benefits in kind. This is due to the changes in the availability in the underlying data from the increased uptake of payrolling. The term “payrolling” refers to the situation in which an employer calculates and deducts tax on employee benefits in kind through their payroll.

A user engagement exercise was announced in September 2020, with an original deadline of 31 December 2020, however views continue to be welcome as part of this consultation. These changes will be implemented in the 2021 release. 

Income Tax statistics 

We propose to reduce the coverage in the Income Tax liabilities statistics publication. This publication will, over time, refocus to reporting outturn statistics only. In future releases, no new forecast years will be introduced. These changes will be implemented in the 2021 release. 

Charity tax relief statistics

We propose to reduce the time series covered in the Charity tax relief statistics publication. This will mean no longer republishing information each year on reliefs which are no longer available. As a result, the time series will begin from the tax year ending 2013. This will enable us to simplify the tables, making them easier to understand and interpret.

Specific details will be included in the next release of the publication expected in February 2021 covering the tax year ending 2020. These changes will be implemented in the June 2021 release covering the tax year ending 2021. Previous editions of the publication with the full time series will remain on GOV.UK.

Petroleum Revenue Tax statistics

We propose to stop publication of Tables 11.12 and 11.13 from the Government revenues from UK Oil and Gas production publication from 2021.  In 2020 HMRC moved its Petroleum Revenue Tax data into a new system held on a new IT platform.

This new system does not automatically produce the same level of detail as in the old system, therefore we propose to stop production of these detailed tables. It is important to emphasise that HMRC will continue to report headline Petroleum Revenue Tax statistics like net revenues and repayments as before.  

Child and Working Tax Credits

We will continue to publish Child and Working Tax Credits error and fraud statistics annually each summer.

The publication will continue to include provisional data but will also incorporate finalised or revised data updated from the previous year’s publication. This will replace the release of finalised or revised data through a separate publication.