FOI reference: FOI-2025-3219
You asked
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request the following information for the period 1 January 2020 to the present:
- Confirmation of whether the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has provided, commissioned, or been consulted by HM Treasury in connection with any analyses or modelling of UK tax contributions by ethnic group, as referenced in Treasury's FOI response FOI2025/18562 (10th October 2025).
- Copies of any data extracts, technical specifications, or briefing notes supplied by ONS to HM Treasury (or its contractors) for the purpose of such ethnicity-based tax analysis.
- For example, datasets derived from the Living Costs and Food Survey (LCF) or Family Resources Survey (FRS) that include ethnicity variables used for fiscal modelling.
- Confirmation of whether ONS has conducted or holds any similar analyses of tax or benefit contributions by nationality or country of birth (either for HM Treasury or independently).
- If such work exists, please provide the title(s), date(s), and short description of those analyses.
- If none exist, please confirm this explicitly.
If it assists to remain within the cost limit, please restrict searches to the Living Costs and Food Survey (LCF) and Family Resources Survey (FRS) teams within ONS.
We said
Thank you for your request.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has not provided, nor been commissioned to produce, any ethnicity related tax-based analysis for HM Treasury (HMT). ONS routinely supplies HMT with microdata derived from both the Effects of Taxes and Benefits and the Living Costs and Food Survey, in line with a data access agreement. These feed into their Intra-Governmental Tax and Benefits Microsimulation model (IGOTM) and are used to create variables used in the analysis of taxes and benefits for budgetary policy. As per the data access agreement, the data are used by HMT to carry out 'what if' analyses which assess the effect of possible changes to the tax and benefit system, and particularly their effect on different groups of people.
The supplied data contains up to 1922 variables, both raw and derived, to include ethnicity. Ethnicity is captured at two-levels; the first level captures the specific ethnicity reported by the respondent which is then used to grouped into 5 higher-level categories as outlined below.
White
1. English / Welsh / Scottish / Northern Irish / British
2. Irish
3. Gypsy or Irish Traveller
4. Any other white background, please describe
Mixed / Multiple ethnic groups
1. White and Black Caribbean
2. White and Black African
3. White and Asian
4. Any other mixed / multiple ethnic background, please describe
Asian / Asian British
1. Indian
2. Pakistani
3. Bangladeshi
4. Any other Asian background, please describe
Black / African / Caribbean / Black British
1. African
2. Caribbean
3. Any other Black / African / Caribbean background, please describe
Other ethnic group
1. Any other ethnic group, please describe
As part of this data supply to HMT we also provide them with the LCF variable guides, which are available on the UK data service. We do not supply any documentation for specific ethnicity-based tax analysis.
The ONS have previously published user-requested data on average household disposable income by ethnicity between financial year ending (FYE) 2018 and FYE 2020. Average household income at each stage of the taxes and benefits system by ethnicity has been routinely published from FYE 2020 onwards, as part of the Effects of Taxes and Benefits on UK Household Income official accredited statistics (see Table 23).
The ONS has not supplied data from the Family Resources Survey (FRS) to HMT for ethnicity-tax based analysis, nor has it produced such analyses using the FRS.