Dear Mr Bell,

Thank you for your request for information about tax income received from tobacco products in Scotland and Great Britain as a whole. Your request was received on 1^st March and I am dealing with it under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Following a search of our paper and electronic records, I have established that HMRC does not hold the information you requested. Tax income from tobacco is composed of duty and VAT receipts. Duty receipts data are collected from tobacco companies in the United Kingdom as a whole, rather than separately for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Therefore HMRC does not hold data specifically for Scotland or for Great Britain. Furthermore, HMRC does not routinely break down VAT revenue by the type of product it relates to.

However, if you are interested in data on duty income for the UK as a whole, then this is available. Duty receipts information for the UK is available in the Tobacco Bulletin, published monthly at https://www.uktradeinfo.com/index.cfm?task=bulltobacco. Data on the proportion of the price of tobacco products which constitutes tax (split into duty types and VAT) may also be of use to you. This is available in Section 3 of the Tobacco Factsheet, available at https://www.uktradeinfo.com/index.cfm?task=facttobac.

You may also be interested in some work carried out by HMRC based on Consumer Trends data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This work estimated the VAT paid on Tobacco at £2bn in the UK in 2008-09. Consumer trends data is published by the ONS and is available online at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_economy/CT2009q1finaldoc.pdf and adjusted for smuggled goods on which no VAT will have been paid, which is also available online at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_economy/CT2006Q1.pdf.

If you do not have access to the Internet at home, you may be able to use facilities at your local public library, or you can request a paper copy by contacting me.

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me. Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

If you are not happy with this reply you may request a review by writing to HMRC FOI Team, Room 4/52, 100 Parliament Street London SWIA 2BQ. You must request a review within 2 months of the date of this letter. It would assist our review if you set out which aspects of the reply concern you and why you are dissatisfied.

If you are not content with the outcome of an internal review, you may apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner will not usually consider a case unless you have exhausted the internal review procedure provided by HMRC. He can be contacted at The Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Yours Sincerely,

James Collis

Indirect Taxes

Room 2E/14

100 Parliament Street

London

SW1A 2PQ

Email: [email address]

Telephone: 020 7147 0843