6. Will the Minister provide an update on the collection of devolved taxes? OAQ54524

The Welsh Revenue Authority regularly publishes outturn information about the revenue collected from land transaction tax and landfill disposals tax. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is due to publish the first full year of outturn data on the Welsh rates of income tax revenue for this financial year in summer 2021.

I look forward to the publication of that data, Minister. We are now six months into the devolution of the Welsh rate of income tax—the creation of that Welsh rate— and we are, as you said, significantly longer than that into the devolution of stamp duty, now land transaction tax, and land disposal tax. So, have you made any preliminary assessment of the collection rates of those taxes, particularly the ones that have been devolved longer, and are the amounts being raised from those taxes in line with Welsh Government expectations? I know that some of the early data from—I think it was from—land disposal tax shows that more was being collected, much more than originally anticipated, at least for the first quarter, for a variety of reasons. So, I wondered whether we were seeing any other similar strange but welcome anomalies or otherwise in some of the other data for the other taxes.

In terms of land transaction tax and the outturn for 2018-19, well that is £12 million lower than Welsh Government's final budget forecast in December of last year. That was £239 million. And a more recent forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, published alongside the spring statement in March, had revenues for 2018-19 to be £234 million. The next revenue forecast will be published alongside the Office for Budget Responsibility's work alongside the draft budget in November.

The latest data published by the WRA show LTT revenue between 1 and 31 August 2019 to be £88.5 million. That's 4 per cent down on the same period last year. And I think that it's fair to say that land transaction tax is by its very nature quite a volatile tax, so it's perhaps more difficult to forecast. And, in terms of landfill disposals tax, the OBR forecast for 2019-20 is £41 million. So, that's £2 million lower than the Welsh Government forecast back in December 2018, but, again, as we move towards our goal of zero waste, the amount of money that is received through landfill disposals tax will naturally be declining over time.