[wdmmg-discuss] Tax and Spend, BBC 2

Thu Apr 21 18:40:23 UTC 2011

On 18 April 2011 15:36, Imran Jina <Imran.Jina at bbc.co.uk> wrote:
> Hello

Hi and welcome!

> I am journalist working on a BBC 2 programme called Tax and Spend which will
> basically look at how much we pay and what we get back in cash/in-kind
> benefits and services.
>
> I was wondering if anyone may be able to help me.
>
> 1) I am really interested in how the tax paid by an individual is
> calculated. Is there some sort of formula to assign indirect taxes etc? Is
> there some sort of "Tax calculator"?

Yes there is. We have a Tax Calculator API (at the bottom of the page):

<http://openspending.org/api>

Example output:

<http://openspending.org/api/mytax?income=20000>

{
  alcohol_tax: 217.26799007444168
  explanation: [ "This household income falls between national average
income decile 3 (which has average gross household income of 17204.00,
and pays 1939.00 in direct tax, 1125.00 in VAT, 1295.00 in smoking
taxes, 317.00 in alcohol-related taxes, 182.00 in car-related taxes,
and 373.00 in other indirect taxes), and decile 4 (which has average
gross household income of 22040.00, and pays 3108.00 in direct tax,
1262.00 in VAT, 1562.00 in smoking taxes, 320.00 in alcohol-related
taxes, 243.00 in car-related taxes, and 505.00 in other indirect
taxes).",
  "Therefore, a household with an income of 20000.00 pays
approximately 2614.87 in direct tax and 3638.90 in total indirect
tax."
  ]
  tax: 6253.771712158808
  tobacco_tax: 318.7344913151365
  car_related_tax: 449.317617866005
  total_direct_tax: 2614.8734491315136
  vat: 1449.3697270471464
  total_indirect_tax: 3638.898263027295
}

Underlying source code which is fairly heavily commented:

<https://bitbucket.org/okfn/wdmmg/src/b759f035a415/wdmmg/lib/calculator.py>

> 2) On the Daily Bread spending, the site mentions using "linear
> interpolation" to assign benefits in kind to individuals. Again here is
> there some sort of formula for how the value of particular services is
> assigned to individuals according to their their income?

As you've read on the <http://wheredoesmymoneygo.org/data/overview/>
we use interpolation from the decile data we get from the ONS report
(Table 14):

<http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/article.asp?ID=2440>

Some details of the ONS analysis is in that publication but you could
ask the ONS for more details.

Regards,

Rufus