Benefit fraud v tax evasion: Which costs more?

Last Updated: April 17, 2016By
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This image is more than a year old and is a little inaccurate, according to the latest figures. Benefit overpayments due to error are now at around £3 billion, while benefit fraud is around £1.3 billion.

Right, so benefit fraud is around £1.2-1.3 billion, while the tax gap is between £34-120 billion.

Obviously the Conservative Government decided to attack benefit fraud, which is likely to be carried out by poor people, rather than tax avoidance and evasion, which is likely to be done by rich people like David Cameron’s relatives and friends.

Last year, the National Audit Office published a ‘stocktake’ of incorrect payments by Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs to those claiming state benefits, including working tax credits.

It did not make for comfortable reading, especially for the DWP, which is likely to miss targets for reducing payment errors. In total the NAO said £4.6bn had been overpaid to claimants in the 2013/2014 tax year, either as a result of mistakes and errors or outright fraud. On the other hand the departments had underpaid claimants by a further £1.6bn, potentially leaving many vulnerable people struggling for money.

But many reject the focus on benefit claims and argue the economy is far more affected by the scale of tax avoidance and evasion. This issue has been placed under the spotlight once more following the Panama Papers revelations, which appear to suggest wealthy people are using the complexity of the global tax system to avoid paying their fair share.

According to figures quoted in a parliamentary report, there are major misconceptions among the general public about the scale of benefits fraud in particular. It says a 2013 survey found Britons believe almost a quarter, 24 per cent, of all benefits were claimed fraudulently, 34 times greater than the official 0.7 per cent estimate.

Benefit fraud

The NAO did not break down how much of the £4.6bn was fraud, saying that both DWP and HMRC have differing definitions that make this difficult to assess. It said £3.3bn of the total was overpaid by DWP, representing around 1.9 per cent of its £164bn spend, while £1.3bn was overpaid by HMRC, around 4.4 per cent of its £29bn tax credit bill for the year.

We can extrapolate from previous figures quoted by the NAO for the 2012/2013 financial year, which found around £1.2bn of deliberate fraud on the part of benefit claimants, representing around 34 per cent of the overpayment total that year. If these proportions remained unchanged, benefit fraud would have risen to around £1.6bn. The remaining £3bn would be accounted for by mistakes made by claimants when applying, or errors by department officials.

The Guardian this week cited estimates from officials that suggest benefit fraud costs the country around £1.3bn a year.

Tax evasion and avoidance

According to figures published by the government in October, the tax “gap” for 2013/2014 stood at £34bn, or 6.4 per cent. This is the shortfall between what is estimated by HMRC to be due in tax and what is actually collected.

This eye-watering figure includes as much as £14bn in uncollected income tax, national insurance and capital gains tax and £13.1bn in uncollected VAT.

It should be noted, however, that these estimates are based on a lot of assumptions about what was due in the first place and that deliberate and illegal evasion is only a small part of the problem. This was deemed to account for £4.4bn of the lost duties, while legal but dubious avoidance accounted for £2.7bn. The rest is spread across various issues such as duties not paid on smuggled goods, non-payment because of bankruptcy or hardship, or simple errors.

It’s also only fair to note that the percentage uncollected each year is one of the lowest in the world, although some argue the HMRC figures underestimate the scale of the problem and the gap is more likely to be in the region of £120bn.

Source: Benefit fraud v tax evasion: Which costs more? | The Week UK

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5 Comments

  1. autismandate April 17, 2016 at 9:41 am - Reply

    God bless the Panama whistleblower. There is tax dodging, where you dont pay your tax.
    Then there is the conservatit’s conservatosh description of tax dodging. Which is tax avoidance and tax evasion.
    According to the conservatit’s conservatosh language the rich condervatits do tax avoidance, the poor do tax evasion. The consveratits are running the biggest age old scam of tax dodging, tax evasion, by running two sets of books, the Panama books stashing the cash away for themselves, and the UK books with the ledgers bare to the bone for everyone else particularly the disabled.
    For Gods sake lets wake up and stop being duped by this criminal deception.

  2. Rupert Mitchell (@rupert_rrl) April 17, 2016 at 9:51 am - Reply

    Both tax evasion and benefit fraud are equally repugnant.

  3. Colin Glazebrook April 17, 2016 at 1:34 pm - Reply

    Those on benefits don’t pay backhanders nor are they in a position to influence “life after government”.

  4. Dez April 17, 2016 at 6:57 pm - Reply

    Good to see the Cons are delivering the right priorities to keep their Elite where they belong at the top of the food and greed chain.

  5. mrmarcpc April 18, 2016 at 3:51 pm - Reply

    Tax evasion but the idiot working class tory knobs think it’s the other way around!

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