Daily Mail amends article on the tax contribution of eastern European migrants

Following a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, the Daily Mail has amended an online article that claimed 150,000 Eastern European migrants were paying £1 a week in net tax. The headline and article body has been amended to say 'thousands' rather than 'hundreds of thousands' are paying £1 a week in tax, and to make it clear this is in 'direct' taxes only.

The figure of 150,000 came from a press release to accompany research by Migration Watch.

The  amended article includes this footnote:

An earlier version of this article reported claims from Migration Watch that 150,000 Eastern European migrants with no partners or children who are earning the minimum wage paid just £1 a week in net tax, including National Insurance. In fact, other statistics in the report show that, of this number, childless couples will in fact pay more. All of the workers contribute to the Exchequer through VAT and other indirect taxes. We have now amended the article accordingly.

It follows a similar amendment made by the Telegraph last month.

Migration Watch stand by the 150,000 figure, but told us it was always intended to be a "conservative estimate".

This is because the amount of income tax and national insurance - 'direct' taxes' - paid by an individual and their eligibility for some benefits can depend on the hours they work and the make up of their household. We don't have data on this, meaning that Migration Watch has made a number of what it calls "extreme assumptions" - assumptions it says would tend to underestimate the number - to construct a scenario in which 150,000 pay £1 in net direct tax.

We don't have enough information to be able to say whether these assumptions hold in practice.

Update 9 June 2014

We've updated the piece to make it clearer that the Migration Watch believes its assumptions understate the number who are paying £1, and that the taxes in question include national insurance as well as income tax.