Con-Dems avoid tax evaders, target claimants

August 13, 2010 at 7:28 pm (Jim D, Lib Dems, populism, Tory scum, welfare)

“When imposing welfare cuts on the poor, for example, legislators in the UK and US alike have taken a singular pride in the ‘hard choices’ they have to make.

“The poor vote in much smaller numbers than anyone else. So there is little political risk in penalising them: just how ‘hard’ are such choices? These days, we take pride in being tough enough to inflict pain on others. If an older usage were still in force, whereby being tough consisited of enduring pain rather than imposing it on others, we should perhaps think twice before so callously valuing efficiency over compassion” – Tony Judt (Ill Fares The Land).

As the dog returns to its vomit, so the Tories (this time with the miserable Lib Dems in tow), are once again promising a “crackdown” on benefit “scroungers.” Cameron claimed in a speech on Tuesday that “Welfare and tax credit fraud and error costs the taxpayer £5.2 bn per year…that’s the cost of more than 200 secondary schools or over 150,000 nurses..”  On closer inspection, however, it turns out that the actual figure for both fraud and error for last year was £3.1bn, of which just £1.5bn was fraud. Not only that, but Cameron knew this when he made his speech (see the third paragraph from the end,  here):  he quite deliberately set out to give the impression that benefit fraud is a far greater problem than it actually is. His clear and conscious intention was to witch-hunt benefits claimants. And his supporters in the gutter press have been only too keen to jump on the bandwagon.

But more important than that, or even the odious plans for private sector benefits fraud bounty hunters, is the simple fact that tax fraud costs the Treasury at least 15 times more than benefit fraud. Some estimates put the amount lost from both tax evasion and tax “avoidance” (the latter being strictly legal) as high as £95bn. But of course, the Tories and their Lib Dem lackeys have nothing to say about tax avoiders/evaders, prefering to stigmatise the poor and vulnerable. Just as New Labour did, come to that.