United Kingdom Budget Visualization

Seems low. That office was formerly known as the Welsh Office. I'm not sure how it separates from or overlaps with the Welsh Assembly, who don't have tax raising powers like Scotland. Presumably spends on a number of Welsh schemes, infrastructure, projects, roads etc.

pjc5010• 7 years ago

Almost all of that goes to the devolved Welsh government. https://law.gov.wales/constitution-government/government-in-...

i.e. it's not to "run the office", it's what central government transfers to Wales.

tomekn• 7 years ago

The missing piece of the puzzle seems to be the upcoming EU legislation surrounding tax declarations of offshore accounts.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/18/european-co...

It's not a matter of national expenditure, but that of personal expenditure of those pulling the strings. It's just being framed that way by the "will of the people"/"take back control" brigade, and people are dumb enough to listen.

ackshually7• 7 years ago

I didn't vote leave because of the money.

I voted leave because I was dubious about the control the elected and unelected officials and secretaries in brussels had over British politics, and the rats nest of well paid jobs with crazy benefits waiting for british politicians in brussels when they retire from british politics, so long as they play nice with the EU and go along with the will of the government in Brussels.

The "NHS bus" is a talking point very aggressively focused on by the remain campaign because it's an easy thing to point at as disingenuous, But I feel like there's a lot more nuance to the choice to leave the EU than many "remainers" believe.

It's harmful to national discourse to narrow the argument for either side down to misinformation or this "they don't know what they're voting for" narrative (not saying you're asserting this, I've just seen it said a lot) because it chips away at the very concept of majority rule and proportional representation.

pjc5010• 7 years ago

How do you feel about the unelected House of Lords? Or, for that matter, the election-untested Prime Minister and his definitely unelected SPADs?

The EU parliamentarians are paid well, but I think there's a staff quality issue here and that UK MPs are actually underpaid; for the hours and responsibility, it's basically a company director level job.

(Of course, the only people that take EU pay and deliberately do a bad job or fail to turn up are ... UKIP MEPs)

Edit: I missed your reference to "proportional representation", which of course we don't have in the UK parliament either. Which is why the government was able to be formed with only about 42% of votes, plus a veto of the 0.9% of DUP votes. We have a semi-proportional system for MEPs, though.

rezeroed• 7 years ago

Aka a straw man.

ben_w3• 7 years ago

Good for you. Unfortunately, I have encountered quite a lot of people who do care about the money.

Today, just half an hour ago, I saw someone tweeting that the EU was “bleeding the UK dry” by “taking” “£1 billion per month” [1] so I’m fairly sure that quite a lot of people did actually vote on the basis of the money.

[1] 1e9, or roughly 0.01% of the EU-(annual)-GDP per month

onlingyding• 7 years ago

There was however a significant amount of misinformation coming from the leave campaign which are hard to ignore and given our current situation are fairly relevant. For example it was repeatedly stated that a vote to leave didn't mean a vote to leave the single market or that Turkey was joining the EU which will 'flood' the UK with Turkish immigrants.

The leave campaign was extremely successful because it targeted different groups of interests with different messages. That's why none of those different interests can now agree on the final outcome.

If I was you I'd also be slightly dubious about the dark money behind all of the pro Brexit 'grassroots' campaign groups.

quietbritishjim• 7 years ago

I know Hacker News policy is to not talk about votes, but can we please be more vote friendly to this user, especially as they're new? I find it's very rare to see a Brexiteer in my usual bubble so I'm grateful to hear the opposing view. (At time of making this comment, the parent is greyed out from down votes.)

simias• 7 years ago

I voted leave because I was dubious about the control the elected and unelected officials and secretaries in brussels had over British politics, and the rats nest of well paid jobs with crazy benefits waiting for british politicians in brussels when they retire from british politics, so long as they play nice with the EU and go along with the will of the government in Brussels.

What do you base this on? It's clear that this sentiment is shared by many brexiteers but what makes you think that? And what makes you think that an independent UK will be impervious to having external interests mingling with internal affairs? At least as a member of the union you have a voice during the elections, I doubt you'll have nearly that much influence with your post-brexit commercial partners (of which the biggest one will be... the EU).

If anything, as a European myself, this Brexit crisis only served to make me respect the work of Brussels more than before because of how professional and rational their response has been so far. On the other hand the circus going on inside and outside 10 Downing Street makes the news almost daily. I guess that what I'm saying is that I'll gladly leave you your pure bred British-loving MPs and I'll keep my European Deputies. And if they get good benefits then good for them, as long as they do the job correctly.

gutnor4• 7 years ago

That's actually a good point and well said ... 3 years ago.

However, today you cannot make that argument with a straight face when Boris is a PM with a very weak democratic mandate, actively undermining the democratically elected Parliament, doubling down on the lies made by the campaigns, pushing for highly damaging (according to the Government own assessment) economic measure.

From the Cambridge Analytica scandal we know that the bus not only worked, but it is the tip of the iceberg of a propaganda machine without conterpart in the remain side.

I can't believe that on HN, Brexit is still seen as a "remainer" vs "leaver" problem. Brexit has exposed a much deeper rot and threat to democracy, not in the EU, but in the very heart of the UK institutions. Brexit is not a liberating process, it is a threat.

NeedMoreTea5• 7 years ago

What of the rats nest of well paid jobs waiting for British politicians, and the revolving door to and from Westminster? Priti Patel, current Home Secretary, twice censured and one resignation in her short career for misusing public office and not revealing financing. Or BoJo and the apparent dodgy funding of Jennifer Acuri. Or Nick Clegg now in charge of Facebook ethics or some such (seems fitting somehow). Or the expenses scandal - now infamously moats and duck houses. There are hundreds of other examples.

How exactly does leaving help?

In the morass of abuse, personal gain and lies that is modern politics it's often the EU and those unelected folks in the Lords who hold British government to account. It's been the EU that has limited the worst excesses of both NewLabour and Tory of governing for the haves, and forgetting the have nots. As I understand it there was a lot of additional regional development funding that could have been claimed for UK regions, but wasn't. Because politics.

ChrisRR• 7 years ago

Where do you stop with this train of thought though? Why do the MPs from the north have any say about what governs me in Berkshire?

It's the same argument just at a larger scale.

reallydontask2• 7 years ago

... because it chips away at the very concept of majority rule and proportional representation.

I'm not entirely sure how to read this comment. This country has one of the least representative electoral systems in the whole of the EU and this is for the commons, nevermind the wholly unelected lords.

riazrizvi• 7 years ago

Voted Leave in support of the agenda of Brexit politicians due to doubts about European politicians’ pay, when pro-Brexit MEPs make 4x the compensation compared to average MEPs [1]. I wonder who is paying them this extra money? This argument confirms my general impression of the reasoning powers of Brexiteers.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-party-...

Quarrelsome• 7 years ago

I voted Remain partly because I am dubious about the control of elected officials in the UK. I feel like some of these concerns have been vindicated as part of this process.

Regardless of one's original outlook, I'm sure we can all agree that this is just one political party slowly shitting the bed over the course of three years. I'm pretty disgusted that they spent three years failing to get a deal past themselves and now they've shat so hard they've tossed their majority.

switch007• 7 years ago

Yes, we've heard this side a million times. What is in shorter supply is some examples of adverse outcomes of the "control".

And "nuance"? Nuance about what?

Your kind of comments can sometimes be summarised as: "I made a very educated and considered decision." It is not doing any explaining or engaging in debate

drcongo2• 7 years ago

UK MEPs have only ever voted _against_ 2% of laws introduced by the EU (laws about human rights and closing corporate tax loopholes), they have voted _with_ 95% of the time. There's a reason for this, they took part in the shaping of those laws.

Now we have no way of shaping laws throughout the continent we're a part of. We've thrown it all out the window because someone told you that the EU is trying to stop us from having bendy bananas.

jkoudys3• 7 years ago

I'm as aggressively anti-Brexit as any Canadian could reasonably be, but I do find your point about the NHS bus to be very interesting. It's fascinating to take a look at what one political group's view of their opponent's core values and news are. It's a bit like when I read an article about what millenials are doing, and am perplexed to the point of questioning if I was really born between 1982 and 2000.

Xelbair• 7 years ago

I voted leave because I was dubious about the control the elected and unelected officials and secretaries in brussels had over British politics, and the rats nest of well paid jobs with crazy benefits waiting for british politicians in brussels when they retire from british politics, so long as they play nice with the EU and go along with the will of the government in Brussels.

Have you considered that after Brexit for UK to trade and work with Europe(which is vital for UK economy) they would still need to follow all the rules of EU and have no say about those rules? Not to mention that hard Brexit is impossible without giving North Ireland to Republic of Ireland.

Did you notice that whole Brexit got traction when the deadline set by EU for UK to implement anti-tax evasion measures that target UK overseas territories?

I honestly loathe EU, i absolutely hate huge parts of it, it is a bureaucratic Kafkaesque nightmare, that reminds me of my country under soviet occupation(The part i hate the most are unelected officials with basically minimal oversight). Yet it is still better for my country to be "in" than "out".

From outside perspective it looks like Leavers want to have every benefit of staying in EU(trade deal with EU that mirrors current rules), Northern Ireland and every benefit of leaving EU(hard border). It isn't feasible.

Nevertheless i respect your decision - it is your vote, cast in favour of what you think was the best for the country, what i loathe the most in democracy(which actually turns it into a farce - a popularity contest instead of merit based one) are people voting just because something is popular.

SirHound• 7 years ago

So you voted leave in case some people had career progression within a bureaucracy? So happy you felt it appropriate to sacrifice my right to live in my country of residence because you were "dubious". To think it wasn't for the money. It's comments like this for which half the country will never be forgiven.

frobozz2• 7 years ago

There may be more nuance, but as long as at least 650000 people were hoodwinked by that, or by the threat of their children being conscripted into the EU army or by the fear of Turkey joining imminently; or lured by the bogus newfound opportunities like buying fewer than five bananas at a time in the supermarket, or sending foreign criminals and scroungers back where they came from, then misinformation tipped the balance.

I don't doubt that many people had legitimate, considered reasons for voting to leave. Those people are not the point of the argument.

I'm certain that many did not have good reasons. I have met them. They post stupid memes on Facebook about poppies offending Muslims.

If enough of those people were swung by The Bus or anything from Boris Johnson's 30-year campaign of lies about "Barmy Brussels Bureaucrats", then this is not a democratic result.

It's harmful to the national discourse not to address misinformation. That is what truly chips away at the concept of democracy.

If we just accept that lying to the electorate is all part of the game, then it becomes just that - a game, to be won by the loudest and least scrupulous players, rather than a sensible decision-making tool.

7952• 7 years ago

Of course this lack of nuance is utilised by brexiteer politicians a lot when it suits them. By talking about the "will of the people" they are reducing millions of people to a single constituency who want one thing. When actually leave voters want and care about lots of different things. And the best way to represent those opinions is through the normal democratic system giving equal weight to remainers. Except that isn't allowed to happen because politicians want to use the vote to push their opinion.

But yes the lack of nuance is appalling.

jkoudys3• 7 years ago

I'll never stop being amazed by how available, accessible, and important these data are, yet so rarely accessed. People will argue with their relatives over the holidays until they're blue in the face, but can't take 10 minutes to read this vital information.

I'm totally fine with people disagreeing over how to interpret these numbers. A healthy democracy should see us able to debate policy based on differences in values or philosophy. Instead we mostly decide what we believe first, then filter to only see information that supports that belief.

virgilp2• 7 years ago

Nice visualisation. But why is "VAT refunds" an income? And why is "Petroleum revenue tax" an expenditure? (2.2B, coming out at the top of the 241B "Taxes on income and wealth")

systemtest• 7 years ago

Is this due to the VAT Reverse Charge that European companies can do when they sent each other invoices?

So VAT is all regular VAT, and VAT refunds is VAT that would be collected by countries abroad but is now collected by the British government because of the VAT Reverse Charge.

jon-wood• 7 years ago

I can't say this with certainty, but my assumption here is that the UK government buys products and services from the EU, for which it then reclaims the VAT in the same way a business would.

Petroleum revenue tax just sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole - according to https://www.gov.uk/guidance/oil-gas-and-mining-petroleum-rev... PRT is effectively zero rated for any field approved after March 1993, but because of government vagaries still exists as a concept. Given that I could entirely believe that it costs the government more to adminster the tax than they make in revenue from it.

virgilp2• 7 years ago

You're telling me that VAT refunds are greater than contribution to the EU? So basically UK has an immediate net loss from brexit?

hardlianotion7• 7 years ago

That is a great idea. Understanding government expenditure on some level should be a fundamental part of a citizen's participation.

I don't yet fully understand how to read it. It's not really clear to me what the difference in income and expenditure is - the impression the diagram gives me is other that income is balanced by expenditure, or that there is a budget surplus maybe. I think I recall that there is a budget deficit that the government runs.

Grateful for advice/corrections ...

clarkey252• 7 years ago

There is a tiny red deficit "income" at the top just to the left of the middle of about £55.8bn

hardlianotion7• 7 years ago

Thanks - that's going on my bookmarked links.

hardlianotion7• 7 years ago

OK - I see a little more now. The red influx is some measure of deficit spending.

mytailorisrich2• 7 years ago

the impression the diagram gives me is other that income is balanced by expenditure

As the government runs a deficit, part of the income comes from loans. This is listed as 'deficit' in this visualisation.

hardlianotion7• 7 years ago

Thanks - makes more sense than what I just wrote down.

barryfandango3• 7 years ago

Shameless plug colon my company does this for cities.

http://burlington.openbook.questica.com/

barryfandango3• 7 years ago

: ;)

hardlianotion7• 7 years ago

looking ...

Spare_account• 7 years ago

Did you use voice-to-text to type this comment?

monadgonad2• 7 years ago

Understanding government expenditure on some level should be a fundamental part of a citizen's participation.

HMRC sends people this information annually - a breakdown of what their amount of tax paid was spent on.

deadbunny• 7 years ago

That doesn't mean it's understandable to the average person. SpaceX could send me detailed schematics of every rocket that launches and I wouldn't have a clue how it works.

hardlianotion7• 7 years ago

Good.

catacombs2• 7 years ago

I don't yet fully understand how to read it.

A graphic that's hard to read is a failed graphic.

ackshually7• 7 years ago

Agreed, this is a great resource, and the more of those "no data" end points that are filled in, the better.

Would be great to drill down and specifically see who gets paid what, for doing which jobs, how much money is going to which initiative, etc.

Would probably quite the undertaking, with the amount of beuraucracy in the British government.

hendry• 7 years ago

I saw a nice gov revenue/expenditure of Singapore here: https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/cdtf4i/singapore...

Wish this UK one was in millions, not billions.

smcl2• 7 years ago

This is quite interesting, a sizeable chunk (roughly 16 out of 90 bil) come from "Investment returns" - I guess the SG government have substantial stakes in businesses operating there?

kalleboo• 7 years ago

Yes, including banking, real estate, telco, public transit, media monopoly, port operations, and Singapore Airlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings

Reason077• 7 years ago

It's staggering to me that £46 billion goes to HM Revenue and Customs. So it costs £46 billion to administer £506 billion in tax revenue! That's almost 1/3 the budget of the entire NHS!

That doesn't seem like a good ROI at all. A product of an over-complicated tax system?

mighty_bander• 7 years ago

An 11:1 return seems pretty efficient given the nature of their work.

lammasass• 7 years ago

Oddly enough, your rational comment has been downvoted.

hardlianotion7• 7 years ago

Makes you want to see how other countries spend their tax take, doesn't it?

cmdkeen• 7 years ago

That may include tax credits, don't assume it is just "administration" costs.

XJ6• 7 years ago

Yes, HMRC has 56,000 employees, so it's unlikely that's all or indeed mostly administrative costs.

pjc5010• 7 years ago

Sounds like we need more drilldown into their annual report.

mytailorisrich2• 7 years ago

I'm not sure what this number represents, assuming it is correct, but it is certainly not how much it costs to run HMRC.

"It cost £4 billion to run HMRC in 2018-19" [1] (page 18)

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

politelemon• 7 years ago

That data looks incorrect. According to this, the HMRC budget is 4 billion.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hmrc-annual-repor...

Which also matches the 4 billion that the HMRC wikipedia page links to

https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130127142016/ht...

pliny• 7 years ago

If you go back a year you can get some detail into what HM Revenue and Customs spends it's money on (90% of it is under the title 'social protection' which is child welfare and tax credits). The collection and enforcement looks like it costs 4 billion at most.

J-dawg• 7 years ago

Tax credits deserve some scrutiny. A significant portion of tax revenue is effectively being paid as a subsidy to businesses allowing them to systematically underpay their staff.

richmarr• 7 years ago

I don't know what their actual budget looks like, but I do know that they're huge and have been making significant changes around digital transformation. That would result in high spending followed by later savings.

nahumba• 7 years ago

The "Budget" is 702 billion. The expense is 698 billion. Now the department expenditures is 702 billion. So they spend 4 more billions then they got. At that point I laugh.

so you see the Hm treasure.

smcl2• 7 years ago

No, look closer. The deficit is £55 billion. What I think you're confused about is that there's a £698bn allocation that seemingly magically feeds into a £702bn budget for department expenditures. However the £4bn difference comes from HM Treasury (it's quite a thin line at the bottom)

the-dude2• 7 years ago

Dutch budget viz ( different ) : https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele-begroting/2018/jv

lucb1e3• 7 years ago

Some things I found interesting:

- We spend a billion on water management ("deltafonds"). I had no idea it took so much upkeep. I also like subsection "experiments" of 21 million euros.

- 21 million still goes to "healthcare for resistance fighters and victims of world war 2", plus 246 million for pensions of the same group (https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele-begroting/2018/jv/u/volksg... ). We're still paying for the after-effects of war (though the amount went down by 5% relative to the year before).

- 13 million (almost a euro per person) of the government's yearly budget goes towards equal rights for different genders (including LGBT) https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele-begroting/2018/jv/u/onderw...

- The climate budget section links to this site: http://klimaatagenda.minienm.nl If you scroll down to "Is warmer eigenlijk erg?" ("Is hotter actually bad?") it breaks it down in a way I haven't seen before. It also drives home just how little we can oversee the consequences, e.g. going from "30% of species might go extinct" at 2°C to "many go extinct" at 5°C (I'd say 30% is quite a disaster already, can't imagine what +5 would bring us). The section below that visualizes the options: what if we prevent the issues, or what if we have to adjust to them?

the-dude2• 7 years ago

Aren't we spending ~300 billion ( in Dutch, 'miljard' ) in total?

MuffinFlavored• 7 years ago

I see a section for €48b for national debt. I thought the Netherlands was one of the few countries to not have debt?

maze-le• 7 years ago

I love the zoomable UI, very neat and it gives a perspective on how "small" a position of 800 million pounds can be...

LandR• 7 years ago

In case it isn't immediately obvious, this is the budget from 2016 it appears.

hallihax• 7 years ago

Lovely visualisation, but this doesn't reflect the direction of travel properly. Spending occurs before taxation. Taxation balances the books - not the other way around.

jsmith992• 7 years ago

The National Audit Office also publish a visualisation of the Whole of Government Accounts (best viewed on desktop) https://www.nao.org.uk/other/whole-of-government-accounts-20...

The accounts themselves are very readable https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/whole-of-governme...

alecco• 7 years ago

In spite of a mostly balanced budget, the growth of non-current liabilites is accelerating. I wonder if this just is due to an aging population and it's effect in pensions or if there are other factors.

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2017/

jsmith992• 7 years ago

Not sure if this is the cause, but non current liabilities are very sensitive to changes in discount rates used to calculate the present value of future expenditure. The Nuclear Decommissioning provision, for example includes costs projected until 2137. In the last accounts it went up 76bn just from changing the discount rate.

666lumberjack2• 7 years ago

UK state pensions obey the so-called 'Triple Lock' rule where they increase in payout yearly according to the greatest of: 1. the growth in national average earnings; 2. the growth in retail prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index; 3. 2.5 per cent.

This causes an additional increase in pension costs over time on top of the effect of the country's aging population and is a source of resentment among some young people.

Brakenshire• 7 years ago

The UK has shifted many expenditures which used to happen up front (say, building a hospital) onto long term contracts with ongoing payments through the Private Finance Initiative. That could well be the cause.

catacombs2• 7 years ago

This is... not a good visualization.

subprotocol• 7 years ago

Does anyone know what javascript library they are using to generate the their sankey diagrams?

ur-whale• 7 years ago

Independent of the amounts, where they come from and where they do, the visualization methodology is amazingly good and useful.

gorgoiler• 7 years ago

It would be interesting to see the loops in this graph.

A few big ones: income tax on state pensions; National Insurance Contributions taken out of NHS salaries; VAT (sales tax) paid on defence spending.

_edo• 7 years ago

There are a couple of good graphs of the U.S. budget on wikipedia as well.

Take a guess at what you think we spend (dollars and percent of budget) on major categories (defense, Social Security, transportation, education, Medicare/Medicaid, SNAP, interest) and see how close you get.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

Ambele• 7 years ago

I was surprised that £69 billion (9% of the budget) goes to Wales, Scottland, and Northern Ireland. That was until I found out that all three are part of the UK and they contribute to the tax revenue.

Overall the budget is nicely balanced. I wish the US ran a deficit as small as the UK's.

ivanhoe• 7 years ago

I like this WikiBudget idea, how do we add our own countries?

United Kingdom Budget Visualization

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