The Treasury has admitted the costing it did on Tory plans to charge a £25,000 levy on all non-doms was based on assumptions, as hard numbers are notoriously difficult to compile.
In a letter to Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne, permanent secretary Nicholas Macpherson said that the Treasury costing of a non-dom levy was based on the best estimates 'in an area where data from both self-assessment tax returns and the Office of National Statistics are incomplete'.
In the letter Macpherson said: '…such estimates are not routinely made as the information required is not collected… there is no complete data set for the unremitted foreign income of non-domiciles, and the costing does not contain such an estimate.'
The Tories had based their levy on the fact that there should be at least 150,000 non-doms in the UK who will have to pay the £25,000.
The government quickly rubbished the policy saying that there would only be a mere 15,000 non-doms who would actually have enough foreign income to justify claiming non-dom status and tax breaks of foreign income it offers.
The government said this was based on Treasury figures, which were immediately questioned by the Conservatives, who wrote to Macpherson requesting the costing made by the department.
Current figures show that in 2005/2006 114,000 people filed tax returns claiming non-dom status. This figure is expected increase, however, with some estimates indicating that there will be 200,000 non-doms in the UK within the near future.
Further reading:
See the Treasury letter to Osborne and the non-dom levy costing
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