FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3784
You asked
I'm interested in data that provides the percentile points from 1 to 99 of total income before and after tax by local authority (or whatever the smallest area that you can release is) for the UK (or England if this is all that is available), for the past 5 years (or longer if immediately available).
Please can you also provide limitations of the data (e.g. data that is based only on persons who are liable to income tax).
We said
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request.
The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), carried out in April each year, is the most comprehensive source of earnings information in the United Kingdom. ASHE is based on a 1% sample of employee jobs taken from HM Revenue and Customs' Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records. Consequently, individuals with more than one job may appear in the sample more than once. ASHE does not cover the self-employed or employees not paid during the reference period. ASHE information relates to gross pay before tax, National Insurance or other deductions, and excludes payments in kind.
We publish annual pay by work-based local authority level, including all percentile estimates, in ASHE table 7.7a on our website:
Earnings and hours worked, place of work by local authority: ASHE Table 7
Data are available here for years from 1997 to 2021 (the latest release).
These data are also available by the employee's place of residence, in the ASHE Table 8.7a:
Earnings and hours worked, place of residence by local authority: ASHE Table 8
Note the collection of an employee's home place of residence is voluntary, as such may not be as robust as the other information collected by ASHE. As the data are disaggregated at a low level the quality will reduce, as such we highlight the quality of each estimate in the spreadsheets.