Consultation outcome

Consultation on reduction and consolidation of HMRC statistics publications

This consultation has concluded

Read the full outcome

Detail of outcome

Background

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) releases over 70 official statistics publications each year covering a wide range of tax-related topics. Some of the publications are released several times a year.

In 2020, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) published a report, Strengthening the quality of HMRC official statistics, in which it recommended that HMRC takes action to improve the quality of its official statistics. The OSR recommended that ‘[HMRC] should review its current publications, with a view to reducing the number or size of publications, to ensure analytical resource is being used effectively’.

HMRC reviewed its suite of statistics publications and identified reductions that could be made, involving 25 publications. This involved stopping the production and publication of some statistical releases, and changing the scope of others. In accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics, HMRC published a public consultation on the proposed changes on 8 February 2021. The consultation closed on 12 March 2021. HMRC actively approached known users of its statistics to encourage responses, to ensure a wide range of views were received, for example it

  • contacted registered users of our statistics series
  • contacted heads of profession for statistics in key other government departments
  • promoted the consultation in HMRC’s stakeholders’ digest and MPs’ digest
  • promoted the consultation internally within HMRC

HMRC is grateful for the engagement of stakeholders in this consultation. We received nearly 30 responses to the consultation from a range of statistics users. HMRC has taken account of responses from statistics users and made a number of changes to its plans. Overall, this means that HMRC will not reduce its statistical publications as much as proposed in the consultation document.

Feedback summary and HMRC’s consultation response

HMRC received responses from a number of government departments, a non-departmental government body, devolved administrations, academic bodies, thinktanks, tax representative bodies, lobby groups and local government.

HMRC has adapted its plans in the light of comments. The key areas of feedback are set out for each topic area together with the changes to be made to each publication in the consultation.

HMRC also received suggestions for expanding existing series (e.g. coronavirus support scheme statistics) and these comments will be considered as part of ongoing statistics development activity for those series.

As set out in this response, HMRC will continue to engage with users on plans for development of individual statistics publications.

Detailed feedback and HMRC’s responses can be found in the attachment.

Summary of changes

The following table summarises plans for all the publications for which changes were proposed.

Publication  Changes to be made  Timing  
Personal wealth statistics  We will discontinue this publication   2021 
Income Tax receipts  We will discontinue this publication  2021 
Tax structure and parameter statistics   We will continue to publish these statistics, incorporated into the Income Tax liabilities statistics publication  2022 onwards 
The separate commentary document that accompanies the personal incomes statistics (regional analysis)  We will discontinue this publication (tables 3.12-3.15 will continue to be published)   2021 
Income Tax liabilities statistics publication (removing forecasts)  No changes – we will continue to publish forecasts   
Child and Working Tax Credits statistics: small area data   We have provisional plans to reduce coverage and meet user needs through provision of a datafile  2021 
Child and Working Tax Credits statistics: supplement on payments.  We will no longer produce the geographical supplementary tables but will continue to publish the main tables  2021 onwards 
Child and Working Tax Credits awards statistics (provisional awards and final awards)  We will jointly publish the two publications  2022 onwards 
Child and Working Tax Credits error and fraud statistics   We will merge the provisional and finalised awards publications into one  2021 onwards 
VAT statistics  We will discontinue this publication  The final publication will be in July 2021 
Flexible payments from pensions, annual pension contributions by contribution type and personal and stakeholder pension statistics  We will merge these publications into one consolidated pensions statistics publication  2021 
Qualifying Registered Overseas Pension Schemes (QROPS) statistics  We will discontinue this publication  2021 
Individual Savings Account (ISA) statistics and Help to Save statistics  We will merge these publications into one consolidated savings statistics publication  May 2021 
Aggregates Levy, Landfill Tax and Climate Change Levy and Carbon Price Floor  We will merge these publications into one consolidated environmental statistics publication  June 2021 
Air Passenger Duty statistics  We will reduce frequency of publication from biannual to annual  2022 onwards 
Hydrocarbon oils statistics  No changes – we will continue to publish these statistics on a quarterly basis   
Benefits in Kind statistics  We will explore provision of aggregate level Benefits in Kind statistics and a breakdown of car benefit statistics  2022 
Charity Tax Relief statistics  We will reduce the number of years included in the publication  2021 onwards 
Government revenues from UK oil and gas production   We will cease publication of the detailed Petroleum Revenue Tax statistics  2021 onwards 

Original consultation

Summary

HMRC needs to prioritise the resource we spend on statistical publications to balance the growth in recent priority productions with our limited resources.

This consultation ran from
to

Consultation description

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.

Documents

Updates to this page

Published 8 February 2021
Last updated 27 May 2021 + show all updates
  1. Added consultation outcome

  2. Added paragraph about 'Charity Tax Relief Statistics' to Section 2.4.

  3. First published.

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