Citation and commencement

1.  These Regulations may be cited as the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (Disclosure of Value Added Tax Information) Regulations 2011 and come into force on the day after the day on which they are made.

Interpretation

2.  In these Regulations—

“the Act” means the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007;

“Commissioners” means the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs appointed under section 1 of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005(3); and

“return” means a return made in accordance with the Value Added Tax (General) Regulations 1985(4) or the Value Added Tax Regulations 1995(5).

Disclosure of Value Added Tax Information

3.  The Commissioners may disclose to the Statistics Board—

(a)information which relates to the estimated or actual value of business purchases, excluding value added tax, contained in a return made to the Commissioners on or after 1st October 1985; and

(b)the date which is recorded by the Commissioners as the date on which such a return was received.

Purposes for which disclosure is authorised

4.  Information disclosed under regulation 3 may only be used by the Statistics Board for the production of business or economic statistics under section 20 (production of statistics) of the Act.

Restrictions on disclosure of personal information by the Statistics Board

5.  In the application of section 39(4)(6) of the Act to personal information which is disclosed to the Statistics Board under regulation 3—

(a)paragraph (a) applies only to the extent that—

(i)a disclosure is required by any enactment; or

(ii)a disclosure is permitted by section 41 (disclosure of information to service providers) of the Act but only in connection with the purposes specified in regulation 4; and

(b)paragraphs (d), (f) and (h) do not apply.

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations provide that the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs may disclose the information listed in regulation 3 to the Statistics Board (“the Board”). Regulation 4 provides that the Board may only use the information for the purposes of producing business or economic statistics.

Regulation 5 places further restrictions on the circumstances under which personal information may be disclosed by the Statistics Board. Regulation 5 does this by modifying section 39(4) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, which provides the exceptions to the prohibition on disclosure of personal information held by the Statistics Board under section 39(1).

An impact assessment has not been produced for this instrument as no impact on the private or voluntary sector is foreseen.