Consultation outcome

Responses to publication feedback

Updated 2 July 2025

1. Air Passenger Duty Bulletin

Feedback summary

We received 3 responses related to the Air Passenger Duty bulletin. Two users were supportive of the proposal to shift the reporting period to 2 months in arrears, with one user opposing the change. One user proposed the publication be moved from June to August to allow for a full quarter of data to be published.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will move to reporting 2 months in arrears to allow more time for quality assurance of the data and the publication. We accept the user’s suggestion on publishing in August to allow for a full quarter of data to be published and will adjust our publication date accordingly.

2. Alcohol Bulletin

Feedback summary

We received 3 responses related to the Alcohol bulletin. One user was supportive of the proposal to shift the reporting period to 2 months in arrears, with 2 users opposing this change.

HMRC’s consultation response

To continue to meet the needs of our users we will maintain the current reporting schedule and period, and not make the proposed change.

3. Annual savings statistics

Feedback summary

We received 2 responses to our Annual Savings statistics proposals. Both were in favour of including additional and more granular income and market value bands in the ISA tables 9.7, 9.10, 9.11 and 9.12. The respondents were also in favour of reporting separate breakdowns of the Lifetime ISA data.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will publish more breakdowns of market value and income bands for ISAs in tables 9.7, 9.10, 9.11 and 9.12. We will explore publishing additional statistics on Lifetime ISA market values and types of investment depending on data quality.

4. Capital Gains Tax statistics

Feedback summary

We received 2 responses in favour of our proposal to include information on carried interest gains in the Capital Gains Tax statistics, and one response suggesting including this information in a standalone publication. We also received a response suggesting that we include data on cryptoasset disposals when it becomes available as part of the 2024 to 2025 Self Assessment data.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will work towards publishing new carried interest statistics, including breakdowns by taxpayer characteristics such as age, as part of future Official Statistics publications. We will explore the inclusion of a geographical breakdown to a longer timetable due to disclosure risks. We will also investigate the possibility of including statistics on cryptoassets, once the data becomes available.

5. Charity tax relief statistics

Feedback summary

We received 3 responses on the UK charity tax relief statistics. Respondents agreed that the presentation of the Payroll Giving data in the commentary is effective. Respondents also agreed with our suggestion on how to deal with donors who have no income or had donations that exceeded their income, with some respondents also suggesting additional solutions.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will continue to publish the Payroll Giving table in the commentary. We will consider ways of presenting data on donors with no income, and donors whose donations exceed their income based on the suggestions in this consultation’s feedback.

6. Child and Working Tax Credits statistics

Feedback summary

We received 6 responses in total about our Child and Working Tax Credits statistics (Personal tax credits statistics). Overall, users were content with the proposals for the Tax Credits Overview publication and the intention to make machine-readable data available with that publication.

Respondents wanted finalised awards statistics for 2024 to 2025 (in addition to the 2023 to 2024 release due in summer 2025), and continued access to legacy tax credits statistics. They also welcomed the proposal to develop a benefits combination statistics release with Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which respondents were aware of from communications outside of this consultation.

Users also requested further statistics on Universal Credit and childcare providers, and further data on children benefitting from tax credits, cross-tabulated by age and geography, within the Tax Credits Overview publication.

HMRC’s consultation response

Legacy tax credits statistics will continue to be available to users alongside the new Tax Credits Overview publication which we expect to publish in autumn 2025.

We intend to publish finalised awards statistics for both 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025 although coverage within the latter will depend on the size of the remaining claimant caseload within the data.

Further information on the proposed benefits combination statistics release with DWP will made available in due course, but the intention is to include data on personal tax credits and Child Benefit.

Due to potential disclosure issues at lower geographical levels, the Tax Credits Overview will not include further data on children by age and geography. However, we will consider any bespoke requests for further statistics on an individual request basis.

HMRC does not hold analysable data on childcare providers for those in receipt of tax credits or, more generally, in receipt of Universal Credit which is a DWP administered benefit.

7. Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information

Feedback summary

We received 9 responses for the Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information statistics, 6 of which supported the addition of the proposed breakdowns, though there were different views on which breakdown should be the highest priority. Four strongly opposed any removal of existing breakdowns, measures or a reduction in frequency, although some other respondents would accept a reduction in frequency if it meant that the content of breakdowns could be retained.

Five of the responses welcomed the move to using International Territorial Levels (ITLs) but requested that these were made available for the whole of the time series.

Some respondents suggested further changes, such as additional breakdowns, that were not proposed. One response requested reformatting of the data tables to ease machine readability whilst another asked for the introduction of the data into the Office for National Statistics’ population, society and labour market statistics service, NOMIS. One respondent suggested additional breakdowns by geography, hours worked and hourly pay.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will switch from the use of Nomenclature of Territorial Units (NUTs) geographical area classifications to International Territorial Levels (ITLs) classifications but will ensure that these are available for the entirety of the time series.

We will not, at this time, remove or make any changes to other existing breakdowns given the opposition to doing so. We will explore ways to provide additional breakdowns including public/private ownership and further regional breakdowns.

We will keep a record of the additional requests made and will review once the current planned changes are in place.

8. Employee Share Scheme statistics

Feedback summary

We received 4 responses in favour of our proposal to expand Table 5 in the Employee Share Scheme statistics publication. All 4 responses acknowledged the potential for additional reporting requirements from employers to HMRC via the Employment Related Securities (ERS) reporting system. Of these, 2 were supportive provided there are no additional reporting requirements, and 2 were in favour even if there are additional reporting requirements.

HMRC’s consultation response

Given the positive response to the proposal, we plan to expand Table 5 in the Employee Share Scheme statistics to provide further statistics on the Share Incentive Plan with regards to shares taken out of plan.

We do not expect the proposed Table 5 expansion to result in additional reporting requirements for employers (or employees). We believe this can be produced by utilising the existing data fields gathered under the present format of the Share Incentive Plan end of year template available on the HMRC website.

9. Environmental Taxes Bulletin

Feedback summary

We received one response related to the Environmental Taxes bulletin, which was supportive of the proposal to shift the reporting period to 2 months in arrears.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will move to reporting 2 months in arrears to allow more time for quality assurance of the data and the publication.

10. HMRC tax receipts and National Insurance contributions for the UK

Feedback summary

We received 5 responses to our proposals for the Tax Receipts and National Insurance contributions for the UK publication.

No concerns were raised with the proposal to reduce our monthly receipts table to present outturn for the last 10 years, or to remove Corporation Tax Credits from the monthly expenditure table.

We received one response requesting clarification on why expenditure relating to Covid support schemes would be removed.

We received 3 responses on Table 5: Annual Contribution by Tax; two in support of its removal and one requesting it be retained.

We received multiple responses about the National Web Archives and ensuring clear and updated links to relevant information.

Additional comments related to opportunities to provide a comprehensive machine-readable dataset for historical receipts statistics, and guidance on how our receipts data relates to other sources published by other departments and bodies.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will implement our proposals to reduce the monthly receipts table to present outturn for the last 10 years only (annual receipts will continue to be presented for 20 years), and to remove Corporation Tax Credits from the monthly expenditure table.

The proposal to remove Covid support scheme expenditure (Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, Self-Employment Income Support Scheme and Eat out to Help Out Scheme) will also be implemented. We acknowledge that other, historic revenues are still shown in the receipts table, but these inform higher level aggregates presented in these tables. The Covid support scheme expenditure does not inform such higher-level aggregates in the expenditure tables.

Given that the data in Table 5: Annual Contributions by Tax is viewed as informative for some users, it will be retained.

We will review the existing process of loading publications onto the National Web Archives and ensure links are up to date and presented clearly for users.

The collation of all historical tax receipt data into a machine-readable dataset would present significant challenges due to data retention policies, and so is not planned to be implemented.

With regards to how our receipts data relates to other sources, we currently publish an Annex in our Background Quality Report showing corresponding identifier codes with an associated Office for National Statistics publication. However, we will review this and consider expanding to include other products mentioned in feedback, to enable users to read across associated publications.

11. Hydrocarbon Oils Bulletin

Feedback summary

We received 4 responses related to the Hydrocarbon Oils bulletin. Two respondents had no concerns with the proposal to shift the reporting period to 2 months in arrears, and 2 respondents opposed the change.

One response, objecting to the change, proposed reducing the bulletin frequency to twice a year, but maintaining the current reporting period to one month in arrears.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will maintain the current reporting period as one month in arrears instead of the proposed 2 months, in order to meet user needs. We will accept the user proposal to move the publication frequency of the bulletin to twice a year in order to allow more time for quality assurance of the data and publication. Receipts data will remain available on a monthly basis in the HMRC tax receipts and National Insurance contributions for the UK.

12. Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics

Feedback summary

We received 6 responses to our request for feedback on the Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics publication. Respondents suggested HMRC publishes further breakdown of the statistics, for example on IHT reliefs, beneficiaries of death estates, treatment of pension wealth and whether a will was in place or not.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will explore whether it is possible to publish further breakdowns of statistics in future publications.

We are unable to publish more information about the wealth received by the beneficiaries of death estates, as this information is not collected in HMRC’s administrative systems. For information about the recipients of wealth transfers, we would refer users to the Wealth and Assets Survey, published by the Office for National Statistics.

We will not be able to publish a breakdown of the number of taxpaying estates where the deceased did not have a will in place, as that data is not currently digitised in our administrative systems.

13. Insurance Premium Tax Bulletin

Feedback summary

We received one response related to the Insurance Premium Tax bulletin, which was supportive of the proposal to shift the reporting period to 2 months in arrears.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will move to reporting 2 months in arrears to allow more time for quality assurance of the data and the publication.

14. Measuring tax gaps publication

Feedback summary

We received 5 responses in total for our Measuring Tax Gaps statistics.  

Two responses had no objection to the proposed changes. One response requested we continue to publish information of the illicit market share in alcohol and tobacco, but gave no objection to reformatting. One response asked to integrate statistics on undisclosed foreign income into the Measuring Tax Gaps publication. One response asked for some additional statistics to be included in the publication, along with more granular analysis in certain areas.

HMRC’s consultation response

HMRC will continue to publish tables on alcohol (tables 3.26 to 3.47) and tobacco (tables 3.48 to 3.61) showing market share, revenue and volume following user feedback.

We will review the feasibility of providing further analysis of the small business tax gap. Future statistics on undisclosed foreign income will be included in future Measuring Tax Gaps publications rather than as a stand-alone publication.

15. Numbers of taxpayers and registered traders statistics

Feedback summary

We received 3 responses in total about our Numbers of taxpayers and registered traders statistics. Overall, feedback was strongly supportive of the inclusion of employees and self-employed individuals liable to National Insurance in these statistics.

HMRC’s consultation response

HMRC will implement our proposal to include the numbers of employees and self-employed individuals with National Insurance liabilities, in this publication.

16. Personal Incomes statistics

Feedback summary

We received 4 responses to the consultation for our Personal Incomes Statistics.

There were no objections to our proposal to discontinue Tables 3.16 and 3.17.

Two of the responses were in favour of adding extra detail on percentiles and marginal tax rates to sub-regional breakdowns. There were also requests for the addition of immigration status, and improvements to the webpages.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will add information on marginal tax rates to Tables 3.13, 3.14 and 3.15 and extend Table 3.14 to include information on selected percentiles.

We will implement our proposal to discontinue Tables 3.16 and 3.17.

We will also look to improve the Personal Incomes Statistics webpages and navigation to other statistical publications.

We will explore the feasibility of introducing breakdowns by immigration status in a future publication.

17. Private pension statistics

Feedback summary

We received 8 responses in total for our Private pension statistics.  Four responses supported the publication of data in a machine-readable format. One supported the introduction of an interactive format, whilst another cautioned that this should be accompanied by easy access to the raw data.

Three of the responses supported the expansion of Table 6 to include values of contributions, number of members making contributions and regional breakdowns.

Two responses supported the proposal to discontinue Table 8, due to the abolition of Lifetime Allowance, and none opposed.

Two respondents supported the publication of data on applications for Lifetime allowance protections, one of which also suggested the publication of data on breaches of the lump sum allowance, the lump sum death benefit allowance, and the overseas transfer allowance.

One response suggested the inclusion of estimates of the pension contributions, funds and withdrawals underlying the cost of reliefs estimates. One respondent suggested that statistics for ‘personal or private sector occupational schemes’ could be split into two separate categories.

One response requested Scotland-specific data.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will publish data in a machine-readable format in summer 2025, alongside the pre-existing format. We will continue internal development of an interactive platform to explore data.

We will cease publication of Table 8 on Pensions Lifetime Allowance statistics from summer 2026.

We do not intend to make further changes to the tables in summer 2025, but will continue to make improvements to our methodology, presentation, and explanation of the statistics in future releases.

18. Quarterly and Annual Stamp Duty Land Tax statistics

Feedback summary

We received 4 responses in total for our Quarterly and Annual Stamp Duty Land Tax statistics publications.

One response was in favour of changing from quarterly to bi-annual publications. One response was not a regular user of the statistics but outlines the approach taken by our counterparts in the Welsh Government. This approach increases content included in quarterly publications including geographical data and more detail on the higher rates of the Land Transaction Tax.

Two responses were content with the move to an expanded annual publication that includes all content that is currently exclusive to the quarterly publication. They also noted the need for the number of historical years provided to be consistent between publications, with a preference of the full time series being available within the annual publication and failing this that these historical tables are readily signposted to through the National Web Archives. Finally, one of these responses discussed the preference for rounding to a lower multiple within our published statistics.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will discontinue the Quarterly Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) statistics publication, with the April 2025 publication being the final edition of this statistics release.

The annual UK Stamp Tax statistics publication will be amended from winter 2025 onwards to include extra material that is currently exclusive to the quarterly publication. We will reduce the number of historical years shared in our annual publication to 2 and ensure that accessibility to previous versions of the publication is clearly signposted through the National Web Archives. We will continue to review our rounding processes to ensure they align between publications.

19. Scottish VAT Assignment statistics

Feedback summary

We had 2 responses to our request for feedback on the Scottish VAT Assignment statistics. Both respondents indicated that not all elements of the published statistics are used extensively. One user indicated they wanted more information on the extent to which HMRC believes changes over time in the numbers reflect reality, or are due to sample bias. Another respondent indicated that Table 1 was the most important for their work.

HMRC’s consultation response

Given the limited use of statistics in the publication, we will publish the key tables and results, for example Table 1 (Estimated Scottish VAT share of UK VAT compared to UK VAT liabilities) along with other headline figures. We plan to remove Table 6 (Breakdown of household SRE expenditure in Scotland and in the rest of the UK) along with a significant portion of the accompanying text and narrative throughout the publication.

This will still comply with the commitments of the Smith Commission to produce Scottish VAT assignment estimates.

We plan to update the Quality Report with information on the extent to which we think changes over time in the numbers reflect reality or are largely due to sampling variability.

20. Soft Drinks Industry Levy

Feedback summary

We received one response related to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy bulletin, which was supportive of the proposal to shift the reporting period to 2 months in arrears and moving the bulletin to January.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will move to reporting 2 months in arrears to allow more time for quality assurance of the data and publication. We will also move publication of the bulletin to January.

21. Tax relief statistics

Feedback summary

We received 6 responses regarding our proposed changes to tax relief statistics.

Responses were supportive of the proposed move from two publications per year to a single publication. However, they were clear they would not want less data published as a result.

Respondents also indicated they wanted further clarity over the distinction between structural and non-structural reliefs. One suggestion was merging the separate structural and non-structural reliefs statistics into a single publication as it can be hard for users to find specific relief costings, which risks the statistics not being used.

Respondents were also supportive of including charts or other pictorial illustrations in the commentary to bring the data to life. This included reinstating a ‘treemap’ chart which set out a breakdown of the cost of different reliefs within different tax heads.

HMRC’s consultation response

In 2025, we will combine our two publications into one single tax relief statistics publication. This will continue publication of existing statistics series, but group them all into one publication. We will confirm the timing of the new publication via our upcoming release calendar.

We will no longer release separate non-structural and structural tax relief publications. We will produce a combined publication covering all tax reliefs, making clear within its outputs which reliefs are considered non-structural and which are considered structural.

We will review the number of additional downloadable files and their structures to make them more accessible for users. We will also consider introducing more visualisations to help users better interpret the reliefs data.

22. Tax-Free Childcare statistics

Feedback summary

We received 9 responses to our proposals for the Tax-Free Childcare statistics.

Three respondents were supportive of the proposed removal of Table 3 (self-employed parents using Tax-free childcare) from future publications.

Three respondents addressed the proposed simplification of Tables 1 and 2 to include only total numbers of families and children using Tax-Free Childcare and exclude information on the Department for Education 30 hours funded childcare scheme. Of these responses, 2 were opposed, while one expressed neither opposition nor support.

Five respondents opposed the proposed removal of Tables 7 to 12, which are updated annually, from quarterly publications in which they are not updated.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will remove Table 3 from future quarterly statistical publications, starting with the August 2025 quarterly publication. We will not make the other proposed changes; we will retain Tables 1 and 2 in their current format and continue to include Tables 7 to 12 every quarter.

23. Tobacco Bulletin

Feedback summary

We received 4 responses related to the Tobacco bulletin. One response was supportive of the proposal to shift the reporting period to 2 months in arrears and reduce the bulletin frequency to twice a year.

One response opposed the proposal to shift the reporting period to 2 months in arrears, with another response objecting to the reduction in frequency of the bulletin.

The final response objected to both proposed changes, and requested instead that the bulletin data be made available on a monthly basis without the accompanying commentary.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will maintain the current reporting period as 1 month in arrears in order to meet user needs, but will reduce the frequency of the bulletin to twice annually in order to allow more time for quality assurance of the data and publication.

The bulletin will be published in February and August. Receipts data will remain available on a monthly basis in the HMRC tax receipts and National Insurance contributions for the UK.

24. UK Betting and Gaming statistics

Feedback summary

We received 2 responses related to the UK Betting and Gaming statistics.

One response was supportive of the proposal to shift the reporting period to 2 months in arrears and reduce the bulletin frequency to once a year, and the other response objected to the reduction in frequency.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will move to reporting 2 months in arrears and reduce the frequency of the bulletin to once a year to allow more time for quality assurance of the data and the publication.

The bulletin will be published in September. Receipts data will remain available on a monthly basis in the HMRC tax receipts and National Insurance contributions for the UK.

25. UK payrolled employments by nationality, region, industry, age and sex

Feedback summary

We received 3 responses to our UK payrolled employments by nationality, region, industry, age and sex statistics proposals.

All supported the recent addition of payrolled employment counts by individual nationality and median employee pay by nationality.

Users were in favour of the inclusion of payrolled employee level data and made several suggestions for further additions. These included: current breakdowns at the individual nationality level; 25th and 75th pay percentiles; inclusion of immigration status using Home Office data; and breakdowns by the year that individuals received their National Insurance number.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will look to include payrolled employee level data in future publications.

We will explore potential additions such as pay percentiles and further breakdowns by individual nationality.

We will continue to explore alternative data sources and cross government linkage options to better reflect current nationality, in future releases.

26. Value Added Tax (VAT) annual statistics

Feedback summary

We received 2 responses to our proposals for the VAT annual statistics, both of which supported our recommendations to combine Tables 3 and 4a for ease of reference, to add a sector-level summation to Table 4b, and to combine Table 5 with Table 8 – provided the same splits in turnover are retained.

The responses also supported removing Tables 10a and 10b.

The responses made the case for retaining the breakdown of VAT receipts (Table 1), and for retaining the full time series, rather than limiting it to the latest 20 years.

HMRC’s consultation response

We will retain Table 1 and continue to tabulate full time series in all tables.

We will implement the rest of the proposals for our 2025 publication onwards, namely that we will combine Tables 3 and 4a into one table, add the sector-level summation to Table 4b, combine Tables 5 and 8 while retaining the same splits, and remove Tables 10a and 10b.

We will also add a new column to Table 11 for Total net home VAT liability.

We will not be publishing counts of VAT traders by country and English region, since there were no requests for them in the feedback, they would be difficult to interpret and limited in usefulness.

27. General publication feedback

Feedback summary

Some responses contained general feedback on HMRC’s statistical publications.

We received several responses on accessibility and usability. Many respondents supported our proposals to publish more data in a machine-readable format and develop an interactive online platform. One respondent suggested consolidating tables into a single spreadsheet in releases with multiple spreadsheets, and separately suggested making archived historic statistics in the National Web Archives available to download in corresponding publications. Another respondent suggested making HMRC statistics publications easier to find as not all are included on the Statistics at HMRC webpage.

We received 2 responses on user preferences. One response suggested publishing more statistics on topical issues, and to reduce the frequency of some of our statistics to focus on more in-depth analysis. One response suggested wider use of ‘treemap’ charts.

We received one response on user engagement. The respondent suggested having a feedback link on the landing page for each publication to get continuous feedback from a wider range of users.

HMRC’s consultation response

This feedback is useful to us in making sure we make our statistics as accessible, relevant and valuable to users as possible. We will use the feedback to inform our future plans for HMRC statistics publications.