Capital gains and other tax figures released

31st October 2007

In the middle of all this talk of U-turns, HMRC have released figures about taxation over the last few years. There is a useful introduction to capital gains tax and several tables, including one (T1.2) that lists HMRC annual receipts since 2001-2.

The documents can be found here.

Table T1.4 shows that:

In 1938/9 there were 3.8m taxpayers paying income tax; now there are estimated to be over 31 billion
In 1938/8 there were 153,000 taxpayers paying tax for gifts on death; in 1948/9 the figure was 58,000.
- Capital transfer tax was introduced in 1975 and in 1975/6 there were 48,000 taxpayers for gifts on death and 1,000 for lifetime gifts.
- There are now estimated to be about 30,000 paying inheritance tax on death and 2,000 for lifetime gifts.

Also of interest are the following (I take them from T1.2):

Income tax income has increased from £108b in 2001/2 to a forecast of £149.5b in 2007/8
CGT was £3b in 2001/2, decreased to £1.5b in 2002/3 then increased to a forecast of £4.78b in 2007/8;
IHT went from £2.35b in 2001/2 to a projected £3.89b in 2007/8

The CGT tables (14.1 to 14.9) are also interesting. They break down the gains into several categories.

For example, in 1998/9 (taper relief was introduced in 1998) 135,000 individuals paid capital gains tax on gains of nearly £6b with tax of £2.8b. The figures for trusts were 25,000 trusts with gains of nearly £1b and tax of £313m. This was still an increase over the previous years.
Figures increased to 2000/1.
In 2001/2 there was a sudden drop. In 2000, business asset taper rates were modified so that the taper matured after 4 years instead of 10 and the definition of business assets was widened. The figures were that 178,000 individuals went down to 122,000 with gains of £7.7b down to £4.5b and tax of £2.8b down to £2.4b. The equivalent trust figures were 25,000 trusts down to 16,000 with gains of £1.25b down to £816m and tax of £394m down to £257m.
From there the gains and tax increased every year apart from a small downturn for trusts in 2002/3.

Who can say what will happen to the figures over the next few years? Certainly not this government!

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