The CenTax Business-to-Worker Register
Authors: Arun Advani, Arnaud Dyèvre, Sebastian Gazmuri-Barker, Helen Hughson, Sanaya Mahajan and Andy Summers (2026)
The CenTax Business-to-Worker Register (BWR) is a population-scale research dataset linking workers to businesses and other organisations across the UK.
It has been assembled from confidential administrative tax records and external data sources inside HMRC’s secure research environment.
This page provides the latest public documentation for the BWR.
Coverage at a glance:
- Years: 2002-2022
- Unique workers: 33 million in 2021
- Unique firms and organisation: 7 million in 2021
- Worker types: employees, partners, sole proprietors, directors and owner-managers
- Organisation types: corporations, partnerships, sole proprietorships, public-sector entities, non-profits and household employers
- Variables: worker demographics, migrant status and income; business turnover, profits, investment, capital stock, depreciation, R&D, patents and taxes
Summary:
This paper introduces the Business-to-Worker Register (BWR), a database of the universe of UK workers linked to the universe of UK businesses and non-businesses from 2002 to 2022.
To build the BWR, we combine
- information on characteristics and outcomes from individual and business tax returns,
- administrative links between businesses and workers, and
- external data sources including on patents and business financial accounts.
Unlike standard Linked Employer-Employee Datasets (LEEDs), the BWR includes all businesses and non-businesses with no restriction on legal form, industrial sector, employer status, or size.
On the worker side, non-employment relationships such as partnerships and self-employment are included, there is no restriction on the age of workers or residency status, and all jobs are observed.
We develop methods to estimate profits, investments, capital stocks and depreciations from firm tax returns.
To benchmark the BWR, we compare worker and business populations to official estimates. We also benchmark our estimates of firm-level variables against external financial accounts.
Disclaimer:
This work contains statistical data from HMRC which is Crown Copyright. The research datasets used may not exactly reproduce HMRC aggregates. The use of HMRC statistical data in this work does not imply endorsement by HMRC.
Notes:
The Business-to-Worker Register is constantly updated and enriched. New versions of the note will be posted here as we improve the Business-to-Worker register. See the paper for planned improvements.
The underlying datasets used in the construction of the Business-to-Worker Register are owned by HMRC and not by CenTax. Researchers who are accredited to work with HMRC data can use these underlying datasets for their own projects, subject to approval by HMRC.
For additional information about the Business-to-Worker Register, please contact Arun Advani (a.advani.1@warwick.ac.uk), Arnaud Dyèvre (dyevre@hec.fr) or Andy Summers (a.d.summers@lse.ac.uk)
