HL Deb 20 October 2000 vol 617 cc107-8WA
Lord Newby

asked Her Majesty's Government:

What tax and tax credit statistics are collected on (1) a local authority and (2) a parliamentary constituency level. [HL4095]

Lord McIntosh of Haringey

Available information on tax and tax credits is based on samples of administrative records of taxpayers and recipients held centrally for statistical purposes. The collection of such statistics is not specifically designed to produce estimates at parliamentary constituency or local authority level but cases can be allocated to such areas of matching the postcode against the Office for National Statistics' Postcode Directory. In general there are too few cases in the various samples held centrally for reliable estimates to be made at this level. However estimates of the total number of working families' tax credit and disabled person's tax credit awards made in each parliamentary constituency and local authority are in published quarterly tables which are available in the Library. Some information on income tax at local authority level was last published in Table 3.14 of Inland Revenue Statistics 1999, also available in the Library.