OT - UKIP, surely we can do betterthan this

Obviously it needs more refinement than my post, if someone is unable to do the task for that day then I'm sure there could be alternatives, I did say only three days a week to allow job seeking to continue.

Your idea about the moped thing sounds good and I'm sure would be a great help to some and would be abused by others I agree that it is a hard nut to crack....I just feel that if long term unemployed had to do some form of work to get their benefit it might give them another reason to seriously look for permanent employment.

 

too bloody right.

 

This was the point I was going to make. Benefit fraud and pay cheques being sent home are small beer compared to the money the country loses in tax evasion, and companies taking profits out of the country.

 

Why not deal with both

 

Here's an interesting dichotomy.

I live just over a mile from the Amazon DC in Peterborough. Amazon, as we all know are a multi-million pound business making good profits within the UK but paying very little to the UK Government in tax by clever tax avoidance in being registered in Luxembourg. Amazon's operation basically survives on the immigrant labour force that does all it's picking and packing - indeed, at shift changeover time there are more Polish registered cars going into and out of their site than can be seen in a Krakow rush-hour.

Who is the real enemy here do we think ?

 

Nail on head... We should be dealing with both!

 

I'm not saying we shouldn't, but when there's a limited budget available for these kind of actions, there's a need to prioritise. It's only logical to prioritise where the most money is being lost.

 

but if UKIP were in charge, they wouldn't get away with it.

 

I think the belief is it's better to prioritise where the most money can be reclaimed.....but it should pay for itself really.

 

Maybe due to lack of resources... as has been eluded to above.

Way to avoid the question, by the way.

 

Why?

 

We lose billions each year through various forms of benefit fraud so are you saying that we should divert all our attentions away from this to concentrate on the Tax avoiders?

 

Any evidence for this, or did you just nick it from the Daily Hate?

And in answer to your question - yes, absolutely

 

Here's a selection of UKIP's extremely well thought-out policies:

 

Going off a recent Independent article, 70p per £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently. As of Jan 2013, benefit spending in Great Britain was £159bn, which includes £74bn on Pensions. That means a little over £1.1bn is spent annually on fraudulently claimed benefits. As of 2011, the UK loses £70bn a year through tax evasion - that's over half of what we spend on healthcare annually. Nearly 45% of benefits would have to be claimed fraudulently to get near that.

Another article suggests that benefit "errors" (I couldn't tell you how much of that is fraudulent) costs the UK £1m a day, whilst tax evasion costs £260m a day.

The figures differ a surprising amount (less so if you remove Pensions from the Benefits/Welfare budget), but we'd have to a 100% perfect benefits system in order to recover what we could from just 10% of tax evasion. So yes, so long as us "diverting our attention from benefit fraud" doesn't dramatically increase how much fraud goes on, I'd much, much rather we focussed on tax evasion.

 

Of course many TAX loopholes and TAX avoidance schemes have been closed down or tightened up but you also need the full cooperation from offshore TAX havens around the world. I dont see why we should not be looking to tackle benefits fraud at the same time!

 

I think everyone agrees that we should! But significantly MORE so the tax avoidance!

 

Tax evasion is defined as the use of illegal methods to avoid taxation. As the use of tax havens is legal, money lost that way isn't included in that figure. That £70bn or so isn't lost through people cleverly moving money, it's through the government failing to collect the tax it is owed. Legal tax avoidance (as of 2011) is thought to cost the country an additional £25bn a year.

And yes why not tackle both, but to me it's obvious where the bigger gains are to be found.

 

Benefit fraud helps people living below the breadline afford to just about sufficiently feed and clothe their families, tax avoidance helps already obscenely wealthy people driver bigger cars, fly first class and build basement swimming pools underneath their Kensington pads.

Whilst I'm not condoning benefit fraud, at least to me - and anyone with a shred of compassion - it's quite obvious which is the more abhorrent

 

The top level of Taxation is still far too high and should be reduced to 40%