Information on Income Tax outstanding at 31 December 2014 (FOI)

​​Request

A.

How much income tax was outstanding at 31 December 2014?

B.

How much was the Treasurer of the States/Comptroller of Taxes seeking to recover?

C.

How much tax did the States write off in 2014?

D.

How many taxpayers who owe tax are being pursued for that tax?

E.

How many taxpayers have had tax written off?

Response

The question seeks information relating to the amount of income tax outstanding at the end of December 2014. It is important to place this information in context. At any given point in time (such as 31 December 2014) not all tax that could have been collected will have been received by the Taxes Office. This could be for a number of reasons – for example the way that the ITIS (Income Tax Instalment System) operates (as outlined below), and the fact that some taxpayers will be under a monitored debt management plan in respect of the amount of tax they owe. As explained below in the answer to question (A.) the cumulative position over the last five years of assessment is that only 1.42% of tax due remains to be collected.

In order to provide a clear response this question has been broken down into five parts and answered as follows:

A.

The outstanding Income Tax as at 31 December 2014 is as follows¹:
[Please note: in respect of personal income tax the position as at 31 December does not reflect the position for the entire year. The actual tax debt for the whole year is not fully calculated until December’s ITIS payments have been received in the following January. See further below]

In respect of personal income tax the figures do not reflect the fact that by 15 January 2015 the Taxes Office received approximately £22m in ITIS payments relating to the month of December 2014. The personal income tax debt was therefore reduced to approximately £26.41m within two weeks of the year end.

To give the above figures some context the tax owed in respect of the 2013 year of assessment represents approximately 3.46% of the total tax due. The cumulative position in respect of the last five years of assessment is that the debt remaining outstanding represents approximately 1.42% of the total tax due. For further analysis of historic data of outstanding income tax please see the answer to Freedom of Information request [number redacted for the disclosure log].

B.

The Treasurer of the States / Comptroller of Taxes is pursuing all of the outstanding tax due.

C.

The amount of income tax written off in 2014 relating to all years of assessment is £1.6m²

D.

The number of taxpayers (both personal and corporate) who owed income tax at 31 December 2014 in respect of all years of assessment was 18,785. Of these, 16,273 were personal taxpayers whose 2013 year of assessment debt is managed under ITIS. In these cases, whilst the debt is shown as outstanding as at the year end, the December ITIS payment (paid during January 2015) will either have reduced the debt to NIL or significantly reduced the debt outstanding (see A. above). Figures indicate that in January 2015, 7,129 of these debtors balances were reduced to NIL with a further 777 reduced to NIL in the following month. A significant proportion of the remaining ITIS debtors will be managed via the 2015 effective rates applied. All remaining debts not collected through ITIS are pursued by other means within the Taxes Office.

E.

1,076³ taxpayers had an amount of tax written off in 2014 (relating to all years of assessment),

Notes:

1. Figures extracted on 28 February 2015
2. This sum excludes trivial debts written off that were considered uneconomic to pursue
3. This amount excludes the trivial debtors referred to above