Since writing about HMRC's implausible claim that only 6.9% of cigarettes in the UK were 'non-duty paid' in 2022/23, they have produced new figures claiming that the figure for 2023/24 was 10.5% (oddly, the previous year's number has been upgraded to 9.1%). I have been trying to think of any scenario in which this could be true. It is not just that the estimate doesn't not match what I'm seeing on the street, but that it is mathematically impossible under any reasonable set of assumptions.
