12 ms·

United Kingdom Budget Visualization

203 points by rsp1984 7y ago

LandR 7y ago
In case it isn't immediately obvious, this is the budget from 2016 it appears.
foobar_ 7y ago
This is really awesome! Needs more breakdowns.
- redlorryyellow 7y ago
  If you look at previous years there is a lot more breakdown
davidiach 7y ago
Nice visualization.
atoav 7y ago
For Reference: this type of chart is called a "sankey diagram"
- arethuza 7y ago
  It's a pretty neat way to visualize P&L in a pretty logical way (money comes in on the left and goes out on the right).
frobozz 7y ago
There, at the top of "Other Expenditures", Slightly smaller than running the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales. That is what's governing the entire political agenda right now. That's the amount of money stuck on the side of a bus with the suggestion that we could spend it on the NHS instead
- arethuza 7y ago
  Yes, I tried looking for it and had to use the search feature to find it.
- Chris2048 7y ago
  "the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales" takes over 12 billion to run?
  - arethuza 7y ago
    I think that's just the slightly unusual name for what replaced the "Welsh Office": https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-of-the-secretary-of-state-for-wales https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-of-the-se...
    - Chris2048 7y ago
      I can see "welsh-assembly-government-2015" but that feeds into public services (NHS ect) too - the wales office is around 4 mil
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    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.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      WAG have had tax raising powers since April 2018, fwiw.
      - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        Thanks, somehow I'd missed that. Didn't think it had gone beyond being discussed.
virgilp 7y 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")
- jon-wood 7y 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-revenue-tax 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.
  - virgilp 7y 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?
- systemtest 7y 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.
hardlianotion 7y 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 7y ago
  There is a tiny red deficit "income" at the top just to the left of the middle of about £55.8bn
  - hardlianotion 7y ago
    Thanks - that's going on my bookmarked links.
- hardlianotion 7y ago
  OK - I see a little more now. The red influx is some measure of deficit spending.
- mytailorisrich 7y 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.
  - hardlianotion 7y ago
    Thanks - makes more sense than what I just wrote down.
- barryfandango 7y ago
  Shameless plug colon my company does this for cities. http://burlington.openbook.questica.com/ http://burlington.openbook.questica.com/
hendry 7y ago
I saw a nice gov revenue/expenditure of Singapore here: https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/cdtf4i/singapore_goverment_revenue_and_expenditure_2018/ https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/cdtf4i/singapore... Wish this UK one was in millions, not billions.
- smcl 7y 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 7y ago
    Yes, including banking, real estate, telco, public transit, media monopoly, port operations, and Singapore Airlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings
    - AdamGibbins 7y ago
      See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIC_Private_Limited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIC_Private_Limited
Reason077 7y 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 7y ago
  An 11:1 return seems pretty efficient given the nature of their work.
  - lammasass 7y ago
    Oddly enough, your rational comment has been downvoted.
- hardlianotion 7y ago
  Makes you want to see how other countries spend their tax take, doesn't it?
- cmdkeen 7y ago
  That may include tax credits, don't assume it is just "administration" costs.
  - XJ6 7y ago
    Yes, HMRC has 56,000 employees, so it's unlikely that's all or indeed mostly administrative costs.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Sounds like we need more drilldown into their annual report.
- mytailorisrich 7y 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/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/824652/HMRC_Annual_Report_and_Accounts_2018-19__web_.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
nahumba 7y 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.
- smcl 7y 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-dude 7y ago
Dutch budget viz ( different ) : https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele-begroting/2018/jv https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele-begroting/2018/jv
- lucb1e 7y 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/volksgezondheid-welzijn-en-sport/oorlogsgetroffenen-en-herinnering-wereldoorlog-ii 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/onderwijs-cultuur-en-wetenschap/emancipatie https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele-begroting/2018/jv/u/onderw... - The climate budget section links to this site: http://klimaatagenda.minienm.nl 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-dude 7y ago
    Aren't we spending ~300 billion ( in Dutch, 'miljard' ) in total?
    - lucb1e 7y ago
      Yes, some 375 billion in total. I don't see the exact number anywhere but the chart near the top of the page shows 2018 as somewhere between "350mld" and "400mld" (miljard; billion). The tables are a little confusing at first, dividing the amounts by 1000 and still having 8 figures, but I got used to it after a bit.
maze-le 7y ago
I love the zoomable UI, very neat and it gives a perspective on how "small" a position of 800 million pounds can be...
hallihax 7y 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.
jsmith99 7y 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-2016-2017/ 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-government-accounts-2017-to-2018 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/whole-of-governme...
- alecco 7y 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/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2017/
  - jsmith99 7y 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.
  - 666lumberjack 7y 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.
    - treerock 7y ago
      That's got to be offset by the increasing pension age? Apparently accelerating the changes saved around £215bn (between 2011 and 2026). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49917315 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49917315
catacombs 7y ago
This is... not a good visualization.
subprotocol 7y ago
Does anyone know what javascript library they are using to generate the their sankey diagrams?
ur-whale 7y ago
Independent of the amounts, where they come from and where they do, the visualization methodology is amazingly good and useful.
gorgoiler 7y 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 7y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
Ambele 7y 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 7y ago
I like this WikiBudget idea, how do we add our own countries?

203 points by rsp1984 7y ago

LandR 7y ago

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

foobar_ 7y ago

This is really awesome! Needs more breakdowns.

redlorryyellow 7y ago
If you look at previous years there is a lot more breakdown

davidiach 7y ago

Nice visualization.

atoav 7y ago

For Reference: this type of chart is called a "sankey diagram"

arethuza 7y ago
It's a pretty neat way to visualize P&L in a pretty logical way (money comes in on the left and goes out on the right).

frobozz 7y ago

There, at the top of "Other Expenditures", Slightly smaller than running the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales. That is what's governing the entire political agenda right now. That's the amount of money stuck on the side of a bus with the suggestion that we could spend it on the NHS instead

arethuza 7y ago
Yes, I tried looking for it and had to use the search feature to find it.
Chris2048 7y ago
"the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales" takes over 12 billion to run?
- arethuza 7y ago
  I think that's just the slightly unusual name for what replaced the "Welsh Office": https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-of-the-secretary-of-state-for-wales https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-of-the-se...
  - Chris2048 7y ago
    I can see "welsh-assembly-government-2015" but that feeds into public services (NHS ect) too - the wales office is around 4 mil
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  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.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    WAG have had tax raising powers since April 2018, fwiw.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Thanks, somehow I'd missed that. Didn't think it had gone beyond being discussed.

virgilp 7y 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")

jon-wood 7y 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-revenue-tax 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.
- virgilp 7y 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?
systemtest 7y 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.

hardlianotion 7y 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 7y ago
There is a tiny red deficit "income" at the top just to the left of the middle of about £55.8bn
- hardlianotion 7y ago
  Thanks - that's going on my bookmarked links.
hardlianotion 7y ago
OK - I see a little more now. The red influx is some measure of deficit spending.
mytailorisrich 7y 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.
- hardlianotion 7y ago
  Thanks - makes more sense than what I just wrote down.
barryfandango 7y ago
Shameless plug colon my company does this for cities. http://burlington.openbook.questica.com/ http://burlington.openbook.questica.com/

hendry 7y ago

I saw a nice gov revenue/expenditure of Singapore here: https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/cdtf4i/singapore_goverment_revenue_and_expenditure_2018/ https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/cdtf4i/singapore... Wish this UK one was in millions, not billions.

smcl 7y 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 7y ago
  Yes, including banking, real estate, telco, public transit, media monopoly, port operations, and Singapore Airlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings
  - AdamGibbins 7y ago
    See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIC_Private_Limited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIC_Private_Limited

Reason077 7y 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 7y ago
An 11:1 return seems pretty efficient given the nature of their work.
- lammasass 7y ago
  Oddly enough, your rational comment has been downvoted.
hardlianotion 7y ago
Makes you want to see how other countries spend their tax take, doesn't it?
cmdkeen 7y ago
That may include tax credits, don't assume it is just "administration" costs.
- XJ6 7y ago
  Yes, HMRC has 56,000 employees, so it's unlikely that's all or indeed mostly administrative costs.
pjc50 7y ago
Sounds like we need more drilldown into their annual report.
mytailorisrich 7y 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/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/824652/HMRC_Annual_Report_and_Accounts_2018-19__web_.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

nahumba 7y 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.

smcl 7y 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-dude 7y ago

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

lucb1e 7y 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/volksgezondheid-welzijn-en-sport/oorlogsgetroffenen-en-herinnering-wereldoorlog-ii 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/onderwijs-cultuur-en-wetenschap/emancipatie https://rijksfinancien.nl/visuele-begroting/2018/jv/u/onderw... - The climate budget section links to this site: http://klimaatagenda.minienm.nl 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-dude 7y ago
  Aren't we spending ~300 billion ( in Dutch, 'miljard' ) in total?
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    Yes, some 375 billion in total. I don't see the exact number anywhere but the chart near the top of the page shows 2018 as somewhere between "350mld" and "400mld" (miljard; billion). The tables are a little confusing at first, dividing the amounts by 1000 and still having 8 figures, but I got used to it after a bit.

maze-le 7y ago

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

hallihax 7y 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.

jsmith99 7y 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-2016-2017/ 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-government-accounts-2017-to-2018 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/whole-of-governme...

alecco 7y 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/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-kingdom/2017/
- jsmith99 7y 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.
- 666lumberjack 7y 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.
  - treerock 7y ago
    That's got to be offset by the increasing pension age? Apparently accelerating the changes saved around £215bn (between 2011 and 2026). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49917315 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49917315

catacombs 7y ago

This is... not a good visualization.

subprotocol 7y ago

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

ur-whale 7y ago

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

gorgoiler 7y 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 7y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

Ambele 7y 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 7y ago

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