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VAT

Answer

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.

Letter from Stephen Penneck, dated 18 May 2012:

As Director General of the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking for the likely effect on CPI and RPI inflation of the measures in Budget 2012 relating to the imposition of VAT [107990].

The March 2012 budget announced that the Government would address anomalous VAT borderlines. These include the application of VAT to self-storage facilities and also, to the extent that it does not already do so, to the sale of hot food, cold food consumed on the suppliers' premises, sports drinks, holiday caravans and to the rental of hairdressers' chairs. These changes impact on the rotisserie chicken and self storage items that are included in the goods and services measured by the CPI and RPI. The estimated effects on the CPI and RPI are to add 0.03 and 0.02 percentage points to the 12-month rates in October 2012.

ONS published this information as part of a wider release on the estimated impact on CPI and RPI of measures announced in the March 2012 budget, previous budgets and pre-budget reports. This is available at

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/cpi/estimated-effect-of-the-budget-on-consumer-prices-index-and-retail-prices-index/spring-2012/estimated-effect-of-the-2012-budget-on-consumer-prices.pdf

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

107990; 545 c338W

Session

2012-13

Subjects

Inflation VAT

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk