Who's have thunk it? UC recipient bank account access trail

In fairness, you are relatively easy to look down on.

Usually yes. In this case the fraudsters are spending their benefits rather than spending from their £50j savings. So they aren't necessarily spending any more. Just choosing to steal from the taxpayer bro spend rather than using their own money.

What’s the difference between playing the benefits system and playing the tax system?

I wonder that, too.

I think both benefits cheats and people who illegally avoid tax are scum. Snoop both ways.

That if you clamp down on benefits fraud productivity is encouraged, if you clamp down on tax fraud productivity is discouraged.

If everyone went on the fiddle the country would soon be out of the mire, eh?

How is that different from taxing into prosperity, a non-starter? Churchill and Laffer and many more made a very good point. Next: how somebody in poverty spends themselves into wealth.

This is what compelled me to contribute to this thread.

Seems there are many people that manage to make an acceptable living out of “the benefits”, which is what rile people up here, yet someone like me who’s paid loads of taxes and barely used public services like the NHS (private medical insurance), can literally become homeless in the space of a year.

I have about 6 months left before I have to sell my home, because I can’t find an appropriate job (yes I am lowering my standards), despite paying more than £500k in NI and tax in the last 10y…

And in turn your post has compelled me to post.

£500k in ni and presumably income tax over 10 years is £50k a year, so that puts income somewhere around £120k to £140k pa over that period.

Whether this home is grand or modest, ultimately if you can't afford it, it has to go. There should be no expectation you are entitled to own whatever house you want if it is above your means (harsh but true imo)

Whilst there are a proportion of people scamming benefits, I think the view that many people make an "acceptable life" out of benefits is somewhat stilted.

It sounds like it's from a daily mail article rather than any actual experience of knowing people who are trapped out of ever owning property, excluded from career progression or well paying jobs, and stuck in a cycle of living cheque to cheque.

The point about what public services you have personally used is irrelevant to national taxation issues, as they are not services you buy and consume like private goods. I tend to remind people that if they have avoided the need to call on public services - usually provided to the vulnerable and those in need as a last resort - they should consider themselves fortunate.


This thread attracts a very small number of posters who have very narrow (in my opinion) life experience. Their lives have been fortunate enough to allow them to live in a bubble where daily telegraph articles get taken as credible, and day to day reality for many in the economy is something they can't even recognise. One has admitted they look down on benefit claimants as scum. It says it all really, and if they are "riled up" it bothers me not at all.

Ultimately the discussion is about whether unlawful tax evasion is as worthy of investigation as benefit fraud, though the discussion seems to have replaced "worthy of investigation" with "worthy of contempt".

I suppose one requirement of people being hypocrites is the ability to overlook their own hypocrisy.


They're both wrong of course, and investigating crime should be proportional to its severity.