{"id":18760,"date":"2013-01-02T09:35:44","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T09:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=18760"},"modified":"2013-01-02T09:39:12","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T09:39:12","slug":"benefits-fraud-10bn-in-nearly-a-decade-tax-fraud-70bn-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/01\/02\/benefits-fraud-10bn-in-nearly-a-decade-tax-fraud-70bn-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Benefits fraud: \u00c2\u00a310bn in nearly a decade. Tax fraud: \u00c2\u00a370bn a year."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/2013\/jan\/01\/survival-fittest-2013\" target=\"_blank\">morning's Guardian letter's page<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The secretary of state for work and pensions uses his office to\u00a0exaggerate\u00a0the small amount of benefit fraud (<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/2012\/dec\/31\/iain-duncan-smith-tax-credits?INTCMP=SRCH\">Report<\/a>, 31 December). He claims the benefit\u00a0system \"is out of control and unfair for hard-working taxpayers who\u00a0have lost \u00a310bn due to illicit claimants and fraudsters\". That\u00a0needs some qualification. The Office of National Statistics shows that 0.7% of\u00a0total benefit expenditure was overpaid as a result of fraud in 2011-12 among\u00a0the 5.9m working age benefit claimants and the 10.6m\u00a0state pensioners.<br \/>\n<strong>Rev Paul Nicolson<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Taxpayers Against Poverty<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Paul is right.<\/p>\n<p>Of course there is fraud in the benefits system: there's fraud in any system. But the fraud rate runs at less than 1%, which is quite amazingly good.<\/p>\n<p>Tax fraud in the UK, on the other hand, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Documents\/PCSTaxGap.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">might cost \u00a370 billion a year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>IDS chooses to ignore that. But he would, wouldn't he?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From this morning&#8217;s Guardian letter&#8217;s page: The secretary of state for work and pensions uses his office to\u00a0exaggerate\u00a0the small amount of benefit fraud (Report, 31<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/01\/02\/benefits-fraud-10bn-in-nearly-a-decade-tax-fraud-70bn-a-year\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-evasion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}