I think its worthwile remembering some things or having other facts as well about what fraud actually costs the tax payer money , yes benefits need to be sorted but Tax evasion costs the tax payer around 15 times more than benefit fraud.
from the most recent data 2008 - 2009 as 2009 - 2010 has not yet been made availible publicly in pdf yet.
Tax evasion = £15 billion per year
Benefit fraud = £1 billion.
To put that in perspective...
Tax evasion = 3% total tax liabilities
Benefit fraud = 0.8% of total benefit payments
Financial services industry fraud = £3.8 billion
Mortgage fraud = £1 billion
Insurance fraud = £2 billion
Share sale fraud and public lottery / loan scams= £3.5 billion
All actual figures from 2008 - 2009 the most recent that the government use also here for FOI compliance and in pdf format direct from the Attorney General . gov .co.uk himself
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov.uk/nf..._indicator.pdf
but you will only hear 1 on the TV and in adverts with more spent on detection more than the others despite some that considering the bigger loss to the tax payer maybe should probably have more of the tax payers money spent getting those higher ones under control .
It doesnt matter which governments been in the proportion spent on detection has never been in proportion to the amount of loss to the tax payer.
Its also worthwhile remembering that the tax payer pays for all those losses / fraud and maybe that 8 billion of benefits go unclaimed by people that are genuinely entitled going by recent figures too , where do you think those go , are they ever made aware or made too embarrassed to claim what they paid into the system for many years by the stigma created by demonizing adverts .
I cant find a a breakdown of unclaimed here at the moment but from couple of years ago... its unlikely to be less
Unclaimed housing benefit / council tax / JSA / pension credit / other support = £8 bn
Unclaimed working tax credits = £5 bn
and they do back those figures up themselves , but you wont see all that or the bank bail outs as widely publiscised as the benefit fraud campaign by any government , never has been never will imo , stigmatize the benefits you pay for , keep those contributing the most fighting amongst themselves and pointing the finger to themselves and less claim the money that has been allocated
Only my opinion of course but its always piddled me off in a way that people in the UK never ever seem to get up in arms about the big big losses to their contributions to the country and always buy into the adverts that really account for so little especially when many many court cases of benefit fraud are also dropped after spending more than the loss .
There are also a massive amount of mistakes and over payments etc that cost more than the payment itself to get back if it ever is .
In my own opinion theres much much more to fraud and mistakes resulting in losses from the tax payer than the relatively small amount of benefit fraud the vast amount of it is also a percentage that will always exist in any sector and impossible to eradicate .
Id prefer it really that if more of my tax goes to help protect my tax from fraud then it gets spent on investigations proportionate to the fiddle rather than spent on adverts and investigations that always demonize the needy and scare others into not claiming
There may not be anything about the real fraud against the tax payer that the tax payer can actually ever do in the UK but although its a problem the girl that has just had a kid and been given a flat or the guy claiming really benefit and spending it on cheap tramp juice really really is not the biggest problem.
Beside which the days of moonlighting whilst signing have pretty much disappeared and those sort of people unless jobs reappear and the situation improve they can only shift from1 benefit to another with the end result back on benefits unless everyone wants loads of homeless roaming around committing crime .
Come on ffs start pointing the finger the right way and stop believing the ********e propaganda about the worse off.
The top few percent always manage to pull the wool over the tax payers eyes whilst they themselves evade as well as taking the highest wages before investing it all in theirs and their families futures elsewhere.
Will it change - probably not Cameron and Osbourne will just play exactly the same games and wont be in the UK after they have done their stint , the rest is pretty much the same as the Xfactor really , get the people to believe they can get as rich as the rich with talent / hard work and investing their own money in a voting system to select a winner who was never a nobody anyway and then fook off with the proceeds
smell the coffee!!
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