Child and Working Tax Credit statistics

Should I look at the tables for provisional or finalised awards?

Provisional awards are based on information on families circumstances and incomes during the year reported to date. The tables for given snapshot dates clasify families according to their annualised entitlements at these dates, modelled on these data. The families’ positions on the tax credits profile are shown, but not average entitlements.

Finalised awards for a year are based on final information, as reported during the following year. The tables show the average over the year of the (retrospectively assessed) numbers of families at various positons on the tax credits profile, and their entitlements, based on these data. They also show data for selected dates within the year, again based on these finally reported data.

For finalised awards, the supplement on payments shows the number of awards (not families) underpaid or overpaid at the end of the year, but based on finalised entitlements.

So the figures for provisional awards are more up to date, but are subject to retrospective change. The sizes of these changes can be seen by comparing the data for selected dates in finalised awards with data published earlier on provisional awards at the same snapshot dates.

Provisional awards at snapshot dates

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

Finalised awards for entitlement years

2007-08

2006-07

2005-06

2004-05

2003-04

Previous errors in childcare figures: documents above were corrected at March 2006 (PDF 3K)