Where the increase came from
Total revenue in 2025-26 reached 98.3 billion pounds in the GERS statistics, an increase of 6.3 billion pounds, or 6.9 per cent. Of that increase, national insurance contributions supplied 2.4 billion pounds and income tax 1.5 billion pounds — together the larger part of it. The offshore line moved the other way: North Sea revenue fell 0.4 billion pounds to 3.2 billion pounds as oil and gas prices dropped.[1]
Two taxes on earnings therefore did most of the lifting, at a time when the offshore receipts that historically cushion the balance were shrinking. That points to an improvement financed through the payroll, while the contribution from the price of a barrel fell away in the same year. The alternative reading is available too: receipts may have grown because more people were working or because pay rose in nominal terms. In that case the burden on any one worker need not have risen at all. The publication gives totals; because it gives neither rates nor a distribution, it cannot choose between the two.[1]
What the per-person figure does not say
In the GERS series, revenue per person was 17,718 pounds against 17,720 pounds for the UK as a whole — a difference small enough to vanish into rounding. Spending per person was 22,281 pounds against 19,561 pounds. The net fiscal deficit narrowed by 0.6 billion pounds to 25.3 billion pounds, 10.9 per cent of GDP, against 4.2 per cent for the UK.[1]
A per-person figure is an arithmetic average, and the average of a tax base is a poor guide to who met it. Income tax and national insurance are levied on earnings, so a rise in their yield lands on people who work. Whether it landed on the median earner, on those close to the higher-rate threshold, or on employers paying contributions is not something these totals show. The same total would come out of an increase spread across all earners and out of one concentrated at the top.[1]
The same gap appeared from the other side in an earlier column here: a fuel-subsidy figure measured the shortfall on the refiners' books, while the households that stopped buying a cylinder never entered the measurement. Here the measurement is complete on the revenue side and silent on the incidence side. The series that would settle it — income tax receipts by band, and the split of national insurance between employee and employer — sit outside this publication.[1], [2]
The next test
If oil and gas prices stay above the level that pulled offshore receipts down in 2025-26, the 3.2 billion pound offshore contribution rises in the next edition of these statistics and the share of revenue growth coming from earnings falls back. That is the figure worth checking a year from now. It will still not say which households carried this year's increase; for that you need receipts broken down by band.[1]