How much will the super-tax on bonuses raise for the Chancellor?

The FT this morning says £2.5bn gross and £1.5bn net; the net figure is the difference between the gross amount and what he would have raised from existing income tax on bonuses that would have been bigger had it not been for the super-tax.

So it’s the net figure that matters. And that £1.5bn compares with a forecast of £550m made by the Treasury when it launched the one-off bonus tax in the pre-budget report last November.

Is the FT right?

Based on some calculations I did yesterday, it is plainly in the right ballpark – although the Treasury believes that it is erring on the high side.

The bigger bonus-paying UK banks – HSBC, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland – say they will collectively pay £668m (which implies, just to remind you, that their total bonuses to UK resident staff are £1.3bn, or just a fraction of the total bonuses they are paying).

What of the bonus tax being paid by overseas banks with employees based here for tax purposes?

Well I’ve spoken to executives at JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, UBS and Deutsche. And I come up with an aggregate figure for them of £1.8bn.

Which would take the gross figure to within touching distance of £2.5bn – taking no account of proceeds from smaller banks.

However I don’t have the information to assess how much the Treasury would have received from bonuses if it hadn’t imposed the tax. We know that some banks have shrunk the bonuses they pay in the UK to reduce their liability to the 50% levy, but we don’t know HMRC’s original bonus pool forecast.

That said, it is blindingly obvious – as I’ve been saying almost since the tax was launched – that the Treasury’s £550m prediction was ludicrously low.

PS It is something of an open secret in the City that British based bankers who have taken lower bonuses this year to spare the blushes and fiscal pain of their respective employers have been given unambiguous nods and winks that they’ll be seen right in the next bonus round.

What a comfort!

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