§ Mr. Austin MitchellTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the revenue coming to the Exchequer from charges and penalties for late payment of(a) VAT, (b) income tax, (c) national insurance and (d) corporation tax in each financial year since 1979; and what was the number of individuals and companies paying such penalties in each year.
§ Mr. MaudeInformation is not available on the total numbers paying penalties or charges for late payment of tax, nor on receipts for all the years requested. The available information is:
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Receipts from interest charges and penalties for late payment (£ million) Year VAT1 Income tax2 3 Corporation tax2 1983–84 — 77.8 43.0 1984–85 — 86.9 50.6 1985–86 — 100.5 53.7 1986–87 — 117.6 64.7 1987–88 24.8 133.8 77.4 1988–89 71.2 156.7 92.8 1989–90 82.1 187.1 131.1 1990–91 83.2 — — definitions used differ substantially and it is therefore not appropriate to make direct comparisons throughout the whole period.
It is also important to remember that real personal disposable income per head in the United Kingdom has risen substantially during this period. The percentage of the population who were living on incomes below any constant threshold has fallen. Thus, for example, the numbers of people living below 60 per cent. of the 1979 national average equivalised income, before housing costs, fell from 9 million in 1979 to 6.9 million in 1987.
Sources are the CSO's annual redistribution of income—ROI—articles and the published family expenditure survey—FES—reports; the estimates listed in the table are made from the most appropriate published source for each year. All the pre-HBAI analyses are in terms of numbers of households rather than population, and none of them used equivalisation to adjust for differing household sizes and compositions. Various different definitions of income have been used, and the one from the FES reports in 1960–61 and 1965–66 is a pre-tax gross income measure.
All the figures are derived from the family expenditure survey and thus cover only the household population.
1 No charges or penalties for late payment of VAT prior to introduction of VAT default surcharge from 1 October 1986; negligible receipts in 1986–87.
2 Information for 1990–91 is not yet available.
3Includes small sums in respect of class 4 (self-employed) national insurance contributions. Penalties generally for late payment of NICs were introduced in the Social Security Act 1990, with effect from 1990–91.