UK: impute alcohol, tobacco and gambling consumption so policyengine-uk's excise duties stop scoring zero #1359

What happens today

• policyengine-uk. It charges alcohol and tobacco duty, since Add household alcohol, tobacco, vehicle and road fuel gas duties policyengine-uk#1876, from household quantity inputs:
  • alcohol: litres, strength and draught share for beer, cider, sparkling cider, wine, spirits and other fermented products;
  • tobacco: cigarettes a week with a pack price, and grams a week of hand-rolling, cigars, other and heated tobacco.
• Microcosm. It supplies none of those inputs, so both duties are £0 for every household on Microcosm data, under the pinned 2.145.0 and under main. Alcohol duty is not modelled: add the strength-banded rates and alcohol quantities to charge them on policyengine-uk#1872 and Tobacco duty is not modelled: add Tobacco Products Duty rates and tobacco quantities policyengine-uk#1873 keep this population-imputation and receipts-validation work open, and the engine's docs/engineering/excise-duties.md lists it as the data follow-up.
• Gambling. policyengine-uk has no gambling duty (Gambling duties are not modelled: add the betting, gaming, machine and lottery duty rates and the gambling losses to charge them on policyengine-uk#2586). Its inputs will also have to come from here.
• Where the spending sits. The LCFS stage draws the twelve COICOP division totals:
  • off-trade alcohol and tobacco are inside alcohol_and_tobacco_consumption (LCFS P602, which also holds narcotics);
  • alcohol bought in pubs and restaurants is inside restaurants_and_hotels_consumption (P611);
  • gambling stakes are inside recreation_consumption (P609).
  • None of the three is a column of its own.
• Nothing to port. policyengine-uk-data imputes only the combined P602 total. Alcohol and tobacco duty are zero for every household on 1.58.0 policyengine-uk-data#566 was closed on the premise that the engine did not model these duties; since Add household alcohol, tobacco, vehicle and road fuel gas duties policyengine-uk#1876 it does.
• This is the issue UK local surface, consumption and high-value homes: remaining items (consolidation) #1278 and UK consumption-tax levels: open items after #1167 #1207 list as deferred, with none filed: "quantities for the alcohol, tobacco and vehicle duties". Vehicle excise duty is left out here; it needs the NTS vehicle file.

What the LCFS supports

From the LCF 2024-25 code books (Volume D expenditure codes; Volume F derived variables):

• Alcohol. Seven off-trade lines in P602: spirits, wine, fortified wine, cider and perry, alcopops, sparkling wine, beer. Eight on-trade lines in P611: the same seven plus rounds of drinks.
• Tobacco. Three lines in P602: cigarettes (which also includes papers), cigars (with snuff), and other tobacco. Other tobacco is hand-rolling, pipe and chewing tobacco and e-cigarette refills. There is no heated-tobacco line.
• Gambling. Seven stake lines in P609: football pools, bingo, other lotteries, bookmaker and tote betting, Irish Lottery, National Lottery scratchcards, National Lottery draws. Seven matching winnings lines sit outside every spending total. Gaming machines are filed inside the betting line, and no line separates online from land-based play.
• Incidence. In the 2024-25 two-week diary, about half of households record off-trade alcohol and a third on-trade alcohol. About one in ten record tobacco and about one in six a gambling stake.
• Levels against ONS Consumer Trends (30 September 2026 release): off-trade alcohol is about half of 02.1, tobacco about a fifth of 02.2, and gambling stakes about a seventh of 09.4.3. Tobacco spending in the diary is below HMRC's tobacco duty receipts alone.
• Product mix by income. Wine rises from about a third of alcohol spending in the bottom income quintile to about half in the top; spirits fall from just under 30% to about 20%. The split between cigarettes and other tobacco moves erratically across quintiles. Several product lines are too thin to impute on their own.

General approach

• One column per category. Draw total alcohol (off- and on-trade), total tobacco and total gambling stakes as their own columns. Draw them inside the stage's chain, as road fuel is drawn inside transport, so that the division totals they sit in still add up.
  • Product detail inside a category is not needed for the duties as legislated. A household's total maps to the engine's product inputs with published national shares.
  • The variation by income above matters only for reforms that change relative rates within a category (spirits against beer, draught relief, cigarettes against hand-rolling tobacco). It can be added later if one comes up.
• Map to the engine's inputs with published shares and strengths.
  • Alcohol: split between beer and cider, wine, and spirits using clearances in hectolitres of alcohol, with average strengths from the same clearances.
  • Tobacco: split between cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco using clearances in sticks and kilograms.
  • Gambling: split into the duty bases using Gambling Commission GGY by sector and HMRC receipts by duty, once the engine's gambling inputs are settled.
• Levels. Level each category to a published total, as road fuel is levelled to ONS 07.2.2: ONS Consumer Trends for spending, or the clearances for quantities. Read the duties against OBR and HMRC receipts as a check.
• Incidence. The two-week diary decides who buys. Keep that, or redraw zeros toward an annual prevalence target as redraw_zero_road_fuel does for fuel; decide when planning.
• Disclosure. Each new column needs a support count of 30 or more households. Receipts give counts only as bands, never print donor maxima or minima, and never pair totals whose difference isolates a thin line.

Facts needed

The Chronicle request is filed separately and links back here. Most of it needs no new download:

• the alcohol, tobacco and betting-and-gaming lines of the OBR EFO receipts workbook Chronicle already archives: receipts, clearances, and receipts by gambling duty;
• a re-archive of the revised Consumer Trends release;
• Gambling Commission GGY by sector, and HMRC betting and gaming receipts by duty.

To decide when planning

• Where the split from category to product lives: here, writing the engine's product inputs, or in policyengine-uk as aggregate inputs with share parameters.
• Whether to level spending, quantities or both, or to leave survey levels and gross the duties to receipts in the engine with coverage factors, as VAT does.
• Whether to redraw incidence.
• What to do with e-cigarette refills inside "other tobacco" (vaping products duty, from October 2026, is not in the engine).
• The gambling mapping, once policyengine-uk settles its inputs.

Related: #1278, #1207, #1167 (the road-fuel pattern), #796 (LCFS incidence); PolicyEngine/policyengine-uk#1872, PolicyEngine/policyengine-uk#1873, PolicyEngine/policyengine-uk#1876, PolicyEngine/policyengine-uk#1775 (Workstream C); PolicyEngine/policyengine-uk-data#566.