Transcript Recent and future developments on Illegal Activities

Illegal activities
- recent and planned developments
Hugh Skipper
What I’ll cover
• Recent and planned developments to:
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Drugs
Prostitution
Alcohol and tobacco smuggling
Tax evasion
• Most of these to meet Eurostat requirements
Drugs, background
• Introduced in 2014 Blue Book
• Eurostat requirement
• Comparability across member states
• ONS approach now Eurostat approved
• Demand based methodology
• User numbers, rather than seizures
• 6 drug types
• Full data for 2003 used as base
• Projected by user numbers, prices, purity
• Adds £4.9bn to GDP 2013 (0.3%)
Drugs, further developments
• In Blue Book 2015, corrections to
• Dollar conversion
• Volume measure methodology
• Academic review – now near final
• Broadly clean bill of health
• Stressed difficulty of accurate measurement
• Recommendations:
• Partial adjustment for purity – reduce volatility
• Better measure of usage – work with Crime Survey
• Will follow these up
• But need to prioritise
Prostitution, background
• Introduced Blue Book 2014
• Eurostat requirement
• Now Eurostat approved
• Supply based methodology
• Number of prostitutes
• Data for 2004 escalated
• Using male 16+ population
• Consumer price index
• Adds £5.9bn to GDP 2013 (0.3%)
Prostitution, further developments
• No methods changes in 2015
• For 2016 Blue Book, working weeks assumption
• 52 weeks to 40, in line with Netherlands
• Eurostat keen for this
• Academic review – now near final
• More critical than drugs review
• 52 weeks assumption, 25 clients per week assumption
• But improvements less straightforward than for drugs
• Will follow this up
• Again, need to prioritise
Alcohol and tobacco smuggling
• Methodology introduced 2000-01
• Volumes from HMRC
• Prices from a range of sources
• Assumed proportions for different outlets
• Adds £1.3bn to GDP in 2013 (0.1%)
• Small revisions in 2015 Blue Book
• Taking numbers consistently through the accounts
• Wider update of sources and methods planned
• Review assumed proportions
• Assess tax gaps data for wine smuggling
• In co-operation with HMRC
Tax evasion
• Blue Book 2015, major review of methodology
• Corporation and income tax evasion
• Previous model from 1998, used 1994 as a base
• Differences production v income measures escalated
• Small impact on balanced GDP
• New method developed with HMRC
• Now Eurostat approved
• Good example of co-operation
• Uses HMRC tax gaps data
• To estimate unrecorded income/production
• Bigger impact - upward revisions to GDP all years
• £5.4bn 2013 (0.3% GDP)
Tax evasion, future plans
• Refine new methods for corporation/income tax
• Build understanding of HMRC data
• Streamline production
• VAT fraud: explicit estimation for 2016 Blue Book
• To meet Eurostat requirement
• Methodology for 2016 approved internally
• Uses new income/corporation tax evasion estimates
• Revisions to GDP likely (subject to balancing)
• Continuing development planned
• In co-operation with HMRC
• E.g. confronting with HMRC VAT gaps
Any
questions?