[wdmmg-discuss] Government Income Data

Thu Mar 25 13:32:18 UTC 2010

I've started by asking for the contract in question, but I don't hold
out much hope.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/contracts_for_aspire_deal_with_c

Which reminds me - before you vote in this General Election, ask your
candidates (perhaps at a hustings!) if they would vote in Parliament
to support releasing all the finance information this project
is lobbying for the release of.

Francis

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 01:20:12PM +0000, Lisa Evans wrote:
> This is just a quick note to say it is difficult to obtain a rich
> source of income data because of the way HMRC has outsourced much of
> its data management.
> 
> For example this request for more information on the databases used
> to store each tax:
> 
> http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/database_provider_for_each_tax_t
> 
> was rejected and given this reply:
> 
> "Our IT supplier, Capgemini, under the Aspire contract, holds the
> information on our behalf but not at the level of detail requested.
> This is because Capgemini don't have to collate the information
> requested at a single point in their day to day activities and it
> would not be easy to retrieve as it is dispersed across different
> databases. Assembling the information would exceed the appropriate
> limit in section 12 FOIA consequently HMRC will not be processing
> your request further. "
> 
> Suggestions on how to deal with this are most welcome.
> 
> On Wed, 24 Mar 2010, Lisa Evans wrote:
> 
> >Our aim is to calculate an individual's contribution to the
> >government income (to personalise the expenditure data we have).
> >However, we do not want to ask more questions than is absolutely
> >necessary (the aim is for at most 10 questions).
> >
> >This requires identifying:
> >- the main taxes an individual or family would be subject to
> >- the rates and conditions for these taxes
> >- the national statistics for these taxes so we can work out the average
> >  tax the individual will pay.
> >
> >At the moment we've collected most of the information in the main
> >CKAN package here:
> >
> >http://www.ckan.net/package/hmrc-national-statistics-income-tax-and-personal-incomes
> >
> >Basically, we need to know:
> >
> >  1. Income -> income tax paid
> >   * Here's income and tax by gender and location http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/income_distribution/menu-by-year.htm#311
> >     But we are looking for more important factors that will affect tax paid
> >  1a: NICs and PAYEs -> how relevant are these?
> >  2. Mapping of spending on special areas (smoking, petrol etc) to tax
> >income.
> >    * e.g. for each £1 spent on cigarettes there is 20p tax revenue
> > 3. Mapping of income to VAT consumption (or simply VAT payment)
> >-- crude approach is to divide total VAT by no. of people
> >
> >Over the next week I'm working on filling out the income section
> >in our data guide:
> >
> >http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYn3JiuouxLUZGN0eGIzOWNfNDhjemQ1N2hnbg&hl=en
> >
> >If you want to help out please dive in.
> >
> >Lisa
> >

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