Welfare Claimants (Chris Maguire).
In the Sunday Times today I note Cameron is following the usual Tory mantra of 'going to war on welfare cheats'. Let's look at some facts by looking at an interesting article on overpaid benefits from the Community Links website (edited sum...mary): Recently the Department for Work and Pensions released their annual figures on fraud and error in the benefits system. It seems a good time to make exactly the same points we made last time this happened. Firstly lumping together fraud and error is misleading and means everyone concentrates on the fraud and forget about the error. Secondly underpayment of benefits (this year running at £1.2bn), is arguably an even bigger problem, because it leaves vulnerable people in a desperate situation, evicted or unable to buy food. Thirdly, ‘customer error’ is not the fault of the claimant. The report separates out intentional fraud (£1.1bn), unintentional ‘customer error’ (£1.1bn), and ‘official error’ (£0.8bn). The high level of customer error is an indictment of the DWP (if a business was losing £1bn a year because customers couldn’t work out how to use the payment system, they’d sort it out pretty quickly). In 2008 a figure of £25bn per year was suggested as the cost of tax avoidance. Not only that, but the amount is widely seen as conservative...
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2...tax-avoidance/
Tax evasion costs Treasury 15 times more than benefit fraud. There are a mass of figures for both. Depending on whose estimate you choose benefit fraud costs between 1 and 3 billion pounds a year, and tax fraud between 24 and 100 billion a year. At £30 billion per year, fraud in the UK is more than twice as high as thought, with tax evasion costing the public purse over £15 billion per year and benefit fraud just over £1 billion. Based predominantly on 2008 data, the National Fraud Authority’s first ever Annual Fraud Indicator found fraud against the public sector accounts for 58% of the total fraud in the UK per year. Tax evasion is around 3% of total tax liabilities, while benefit fraud accounts for 0.8% of total benefit expenditure. In the private sector, the report shows the financial services industry recorded the highest loss to fraudsters, estimated to be £3.8 billion, with £1 billion in mortgage fraud and over £2 billion lost in insurance fraud. The consumer goods and manufacturing industry are estimated to have lost £1.3 billion and £1 billion respectively. Credit and debit card fraud is estimated to be 0.1% of all transactions. Fraud - such as share sale fraud and lottery and loan scams - cost consumers around £3.5 billion per year, the report's author said. Attorney General Baroness Scotland, who superintends the NFA, said: 'The NFA Annual Fraud Indicator is a milestone in tackling fraud. It means we now have a much more accurate fraud picture which is crucial so we can better target fraudsters.' But she said more organisations need to measure and report the money they lose to fraud. The government and the NFA have already promised to take a hard line on fraud and the government sett up a task force which hopes to reduce the impact of fraud on the public purse. The NFA recently launched Action Fraud, the UK's first national fraud reporting centre, where victims of fraud can both report fraud and seek guidance and advice.
http://www.citywire.co.uk/new-model-adviser/tax-evasion-costs-treasury-15-times-more-than-benefit-fraud/a378274
There are more people working than ever before, so the benefits argument is a red herring. The overwhelming majority of people are not, as John Lydon would put it, "lazy sods". Those unfortunate to be on benefits, don't want to be so. No need to make it harder. There's still the possibility of a society that's not based on the "work makes free" variant, surely now passed it's sell by date?
Tax evasion costs Treasury 15 times more than benefit fraud. There are a mass of figures for both. Depending on whose estimate you choose benefit fraud costs between 1 and 3 billion pounds a year, and tax fraud between 24 and 100 billion a year. At £30 billion per year, fraud in the UK is more than twice as high as thought, with tax evasion costing the public purse over £15 billion per year and benefit fraud just over £1 billion. Based predominantly on 2008 data, the National Fraud Authority’s first ever Annual Fraud Indicator found fraud against the public sector accounts for 58% of the total fraud in the UK per year. Tax evasion is around 3% of total tax liabilities, while benefit fraud accounts for 0.8% of total benefit expenditure. In the private sector, the report shows the financial services industry recorded the highest loss to fraudsters, estimated to be £3.8 billion, with £1 billion in mortgage fraud and over £2 billion lost in insurance fraud. The consumer goods and manufacturing industry are estimated to have lost £1.3 billion and £1 billion respectively. Credit and debit card fraud is estimated to be 0.1% of all transactions. Fraud - such as share sale fraud and lottery and loan scams - cost consumers around £3.5 billion per year, the report's author said. Attorney General Baroness Scotland, who superintends the NFA, said: 'The NFA Annual Fraud Indicator is a milestone in tackling fraud. It means we now have a much more accurate fraud picture which is crucial so we can better target fraudsters.' But she said more organisations need to measure and report the money they lose to fraud. The government and the NFA have already promised to take a hard line on fraud and the government sett up a task force which hopes to reduce the impact of fraud on the public purse. The NFA recently launched Action Fraud, the UK's first national fraud reporting centre, where victims of fraud can both report fraud and seek guidance and advice.
There are more people working than ever before, so the benefits argument is a red herring. The overwhelming majority of people are not, as John Lydon would put it, "lazy sods". Those unfortunate to be on benefits, don't want to be so. No need to make it harder. There's still the possibility of a society that's not based on the "work makes free" variant, surely now passed it's sell by date?