Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many businesses do not meet the VAT threshold in (a) the UK and (b) in each region of the UK.

The most recent year for which we hold complete tax records is for businesses with a basis period ending in 2021-22. For this year across the whole of the UK, there were a total of 9,170,000 businesses that declared turnover below the VAT threshold. Of these, 210,000 also had profits above £45,000.

Please note that this is the total number of businesses with turnover below the VAT threshold. Of these some may have registered for VAT voluntarily, and others may be exempt from VAT for other reasons.

HMRC does not hold readily available data on the regional breakdown of the total number of businesses across the UK which can be used for analysing VAT. This is because some businesses can have both single and multiple sites, and therefore such breakdowns would be of limited value.