[wdmmg-discuss] Government Income Data

Thu Mar 25 13:40:25 UTC 2010

This is bogus.  And it confirms that they don't know what they are
doing, if it's all in different databases.

They can't claim not to be interested in what they get from each tax
type and how much.  How are they supposed to set the tax rates if they
don't know!  They have economic models, for sure.

You need to ask the question a bit more clearly.  Maybe get the
different tax types and do a one-for-one FOI on each one is what they
need.  Do only one at first to test the waters.

JT

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Lisa Evans <lisa.evans at okfn.org> 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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