Pensioners (Tax Payments) (Hansard, 8 September 2004)

§ Ruth Kelly

I have been asked to reply.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.

Letter from Len Cook to Mr. David Wi/lets, dated 8 September 2004: As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Questions asking, for the latest year for which figures are available, for the total amount of (a) income tax and (b) council tax. paid by pensioners and the average tax per pensioner who paid each tax (187351), and how many pensioners paid each tax (187355). For estimates relating to income tax please see table 3.12 "Income and tax for individuals aged 65 and above, by region and country, 2001–02" on the Inland Revenue website: www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/stats/income_distribution/table-312–2001 -02.pdf. The information in this table relates to individual taxpayers, not households, who are aged 65 and above. This table does not include female taxpaying pensioners aged between 60 and 65. It shows there were about 4.1 million pensioners taxpayers aged 65 or over in the UK in 2001–02, with income tax liability of £8.2 billion. This gives an average tax of about £2,000 per pensioner taxpayer (aged 65 or over). Estimates for council tax paid by pensioner households have been produced from the Office for National Statistics' analysis "The effects of taxes and benefits on household income" published on the National Statistics website on 6 May 2004 at: www.statistics.gov.uk/taxesbenefits The analysis includes measures of income inequality for households in the United Kingdom as a whole based on data from the Expenditure and Food Survey. This is a sample survey covering about 7,000 households in the UK and sample sizes for pensioner households are only sufficient to give very approximate estimates. Estimates for 2002–03 suggest that that single and couple pensioner households in GB paid about £3.6 billion in council tax net of benefits and discounts. The average council tax paid by the approximately five million pensioner households (single and couples) who paid council tax (i.e. their council tax was greater than zero) was about £700 per year. Council tax is not paid in Northern Ireland. Net council tax is defined as gross council tax less benefits and discounts, where a household reports taking up a council tax benefit entitlement. These estimates of numbers of pensioners and payments of council tax may not match population data or administrative payments data because of sample size and weighting issues, as well as possible inaccurate reporting by respondents. Pensioner households have been defined as those where the Household Reference Person is retired or unoccupied and aged 65 or more and male, or 60 years of age or more and female, and economically inactive. Detailed information on the definition of the Household Reference Person can be found in Appendix D of the document at the following address: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_social/Family_Spending_2002–-03/Family_Spending_2002–03_revised.pdf