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Document that Northern Ireland business rates count regional and district rates - #2344

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Fixes #2343

Summary

Documentation only. No values or formulas change. It explains why business_rates.statistics.revenue.NORTHERN_IRELAND (£741m in 2024-25) is about twice the OBR line that projects it (£382m):

  • The NI series counts the whole rate bill: the regional rate plus each council's district rate, levied as one bill (Rates (Northern Ireland) Order 1977, art 9(1)).
  • The OBR's "Northern Ireland business rates" line (receipts Table 3.2) covers the regional rate only.

Stacked on #2322 (base update-corporate-receipts-statistics). Merge it into that branch before #2322 merges, or cherry-pick the commit.

Evidence

All figures are £m, for 2024-25:

Value Source
LPS non-domestic rates paid (the statistic) 741.3 OpenDataNI, "Non-Domestic Rates collected by District Council", row "Northern Ireland"
Regional part, computed 363.7 Each council's payments × regional/(regional + district) poundage. Regional 29.02p (NISR 2024/28 art 3(1)); district 25.57p to 38.22p (DfC Rate Statistics 2025/26, Table 4)
District part, computed 377.7 Remainder
ONS, NI regional non-domestic rates (central government) 327 ONS CRPSF revenue tables, FYE 2025, sheet "Northern Ireland", row 38
ONS, NI district non-domestic rates (local government) 378 Same table, row 47
OBR, "Northern Ireland business rates" 382.3 OBR March 2026 receipts, Table 3.2, cell C7

DoF corroborates the split:

  • Regional rate income is "forecasted to generate just over £900m" in 2026-27 (NI Assembly written statement, 12 February 2026).
  • The OBR's two NI lines (domestic and business) sum to £913.7m that year.

Decision

  • Keep the level. Counting only the regional rate would halve the rates NI businesses pay. It would also break symmetry with:
    • domestic_rates, which charges the full NI bill;
    • the GB series, which count all non-domestic rates paid, including the shares councils retain.
  • Keep the index. The OBR line is the only official forecast. Applying it to the district part is now stated as an assumption.
    • The alternative uses enacted 2026-27 poundages: regional +3.01%, district +3.75%, combined +3.40%, against the OBR's +2.01%.
    • That would add £10.7m to 2026-27, which is immaterial, and poundage growth omits base changes.

Changes

  • parameters/gov/hmrc/business_rates/statistics.yaml: header and NORTHERN_IRELAND comment and description.
  • parameters/gov/economic_assumptions/yoy_growth.yaml: description of obr.business_rates.northern_ireland.
  • data/fiscal_partition.yaml: the NI sentence of the business_rates data note.

Tests

test_fiscal_partition.py and test_corporate_receipts_statistics.py: 180 passed locally (uv run --frozen --extra dev pytest, head of this branch). No test reads the changed text. CI runs only for PRs into main.

Review

Independent review: pending.

axiom: n/a: documentation of official receipts statistics; no law encoded or changed

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

The Northern Ireland statistic is LPS non-domestic rates paid, which covers
the regional rate and each council's district rate (levied as one bill,
Rates (Northern Ireland) Order 1977, art 9(1)). The OBR's "Northern Ireland
business rates" line that projects it covers the regional rate only, which
is why the statistic is about twice the line. ONS records the two parts
separately (CRPSF FYE 2025: regional £327m, district £378m in 2024-25).

Fixes #2343

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@MaxGhenis
MaxGhenis force-pushed the ni-business-rates-regional-district branch from 941107b to 1432062 Compare October 11, 2026 19:20

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