Benefit Cheat took £24,000 over six years

And here is the story..

From the title of this post, you might be thinking I’ve gone all dedworth in my old age, raving about a scrounger who has had £24,000 in benefits over the last 6 years (according to the Daily Mail) and that this was fraudulent. In other words, she shouldn’t have it – she told some porkies.

Now, I won’t justify what she did. She shouldn’t have claimed she had split from her husband when she was still living with him.

But I’d like to pose a question.

Every few days a news story in the Daily Mail, The Sun or other “newsworthy source” gets our attention and perhaps causes enough anger that one of us will post a link to the offending story here in the forums. But how many newspaper articles have you read about how certain multimillionaires avoid paying tax or corporations getting massive tax incentives from the Government?

I ask this because benefit fraud costs the UK taxpayers (an estimated) 1 billion pounds per year, but tax avoidance by the wealthiest people living in this country amounts to over (an estimated) 25 billion pounds per year!

So which one is more damaging to our state and national economy?

Who is the biggest sleazeball? The woman claiming £4,000 a year or Sir Philip Green stashing millions in offshore tax havens and registering all his worldly goods in the name of his wife (who lives in Monaco)? But do the Daily Mail go after Sir Philip Greene Do they send their wolf packs of journalists to his offices and where he lives to photograph him and ask him why he is ripping off the UK taxpayer? Do they ever ask him why he avoids paying millions in tax, pays his store staff paltry wages which then have to be subsidised by working tax credits in order to allow someone to pay their bills and eat?

Perhaps the likes of the Sun or the Daily Mail won’t upset Sir Philip Green, given how his company Topshop put advertisements in all of their publications. He probably pays some of these media companies thousands of pounds each and every day!

And it isn’t just the people claiming benefits fraudulently, immigrants to this country who tend to be at the bottom of the ladder get a raw deal when it comes to the media, but not once do they dare chase after people who really rip this country off!

But Sir Philip Green creates jobs, his stores provide a service we need? – The question might be asked... Utter nonsense! If Topshop and all of the massive stores died out tomorrow, smaller retailers would fill in the void and occupy our towns and cities and selling clothes to the masses. And they’d pay their taxes!!

But this isn’t a rant against Sir Philip Greene, this isn’t a rant against Topshop. An utter sleazeball he may be, but Philip Greene is still a product of the system. A system that buys politicians through promises of future employment working the after dinner speech circuit (does anyone really want to pay good money to listen to Gordon Brown talk for half an hour?). And then these stories about benefit fraudsters, immigrants and whoever else is at fault is simply a means to divert our attention away from the real problem we face as a society.

Our problems don’t really lie with people who claim a few grand a year from the state when they shouldn’t have, our problems stem from a system that socialises debt but privatises profit.

I once listened into a local radio talk show where a man who described himself as a scrounger came on to discuss his logic and reasoning for getting as much money out of the state and trying his best not to work for it. And his reasoning was pretty simple, if “Phil the Greek can scrounge off the state, then so can I”, referring to Prince Philip and by extension the entire Royal Family. And of course whilst we have a country where the head of state lives a life of luxury paid for by the state, has numerous hangers on; vying for a few more grand from the Royal Pot – can we really expect the rest of the country to just accept that they have to work to pay for some to live in privilege?

And of course, I’m not going to debate anyone as to whether or not the Royal Family pay for themselves with the boost to the coffers from the tourist industry that surrounds them. I think overall they do, but the point that some people live off of the state as a birthright will always be used as a logical excuse to someone who decides to live their life “on the dole”.

So by making life hard for a few dole cheats, we may make a few little Englanders sleep a little bit better whilst they worry about a Mosque opening up next to their quant little village church, but the real problems will just carry on.

Both sets are vile for different reasons, but the benefit scrounger does win it for me hands down, regardless of the paltry amounts compared to the tax avoiders.

The reason for my thought is very simple, the scrounger takes something that is already in the kitty for needy people, just slightly worse than stealing,but the rich worm with tax avoidance schemes, although guilty of not contributing fully, or at all, to his/her obligations, is actually not taking anything away that has been ring fenced for something.

Doesn't excuse both sets in any way shape or form as despicable acts go, but a subtle difference in how I view it, is there.

It is a bit more complex, but the jist is there....

I suppose someone may well red-arrow me for that...

It is one thing investing into an ISA (which is a small savings pot) or a pension, compared to the billions stuffed into tax havens. It is also worrying that these tax havens tend to come under British control (so our taxes in effect pay for their protection from potential invaders, plus invading a NATO country could put one at war with the USA). So the likes of the Kaman islands are safe to carry on stashing money, allowing elites to amass huge fortunes and never be accountable to the countries from which they draw their wealth.

I think it is self evident why tax havens and the very unfair tax system we have (in the west, not just the UK) enriches those with the means to do so. Not to mention, most tax policies get written by accountants who then profit from the knowledge of the ins and out of how to bypass the taxman altogether.

And is tax avoidance and tax evasion really any different? In real terms they’re the same thing, one just a little bit cleverer than the other. Loopholes are kept as they are because those in power like to keep them that way.

Getting back to who is worse, the person scamming a few hundred a month from the state or the person avoiding millions in tax each year, I think the question that needs answering just isn’t being asked. Why did they do it? Getting to a person’s reasons for doing something – for committing a crime, dictates how they should be viewed, even punished. For all we know the woman who got £24,000 over 6 years might have been earning far less than a person working and was facing going to the food bank or blagging a bit more off of the dole! We just don’t know, and this is why it is impossible to make a distinction.

But I threw the question out there for you all to think about it.

But what is the reasoning behind someone avoiding payments of millions in tax?