Innispurs - 17/1/2014 22:20
Welsh, I'm talking about the wealthy corporations and individuals who DO NOT pay into the system, who avoid and evade their legal and moral responsibilities - they are basically scroungers. I am talking about Tax fraud, not wealthy people - or wealth creators - who pay their way. The difference here is crucial and depending on which figures you believe, it costs us any thing between £32 and £75 billion per year. This is money we are losing - you me and every man and woman in the UK. It's a scandal and should be addressed with the same urgency that benefits fraud is. I am looking at this with an eye to justice and doing what is moral and right and to the benefit of everyone.
The tax gap is £32 billion as estimated by HMRC, unless of course we also decide that the true amount of social fraud and benefit fraud is around £5.5 billion, not the £1.2 billion you quote...
"Welcome to this website about the scandal of benefit fraud.
Benefit fraud is rife in the UK. The government pretends it costs us £1.2bn annually. But the real figure is probably at least £5.5bn a year.
Government figures show there were 5.80m working age benefit claimants at February 2009 - this is 15.7% of the working age population!
The number of working age claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and incapacity benefits totalled 2.60m. 736,000 people were claiming lone parent benefit.
In the year to February there were 422,000 new claims to working age incapacity benefits, and 549,000 new claims for Income Support.
These huge numbers cannot be policed effectively for fraudulent claims. They only emphasise the case for deterrent punishments for those few who do get caught. Indeed, the DWP's boast is that they have over 3,000 fraud investigators. How could they hope to police millions of claims? They can't, of course."
Of course a really good place to start is delaing with Tax Avoidance and all those who help it happen...
Margaret Hodge the labour stalwart who is determined to bring these global corporations to book and who has been privately scathing about the 'support' offered by tax havens in the EU i.e. Ireland, who because of their stance may well have cost the UK treasury an estimated (to date) £100 billion in 'avoidable' taxes because of it's corporate tax rates and laws..(essentially it allows corprorates to have a brass plate operation in Ireland that they can then wash revenues through and pay minimal, if any tax)...
Of course, this is all laudable by Hodge, except of course her own family business is also at it....
" The Labour MP has been one of the fiercest critics of tax avoidance by companies such as Starbucks, Google and Amazon. However, she is likely to face questions over the limited tax paid by Stemcor, the steel trading company in which she owns shares and which was founded by her father and is run by her brother.
Analysis of Stemcor’s latest accounts show that the business paid tax of just £163,000 on revenues of more than £2.1bn in 2011. However. it is not known whether the company – which made profits of £65m – used similar controversial tax avoidance measures criticised in the past by Mrs Hodge.
Stemcor’s tax bill to the exchequer equates to just 0.01pc of the revenues it booked through its UK-based business. In accounts filed with Companies House, Stemcor revealed that despite generating about one third of its revenues in Britain, its UK tax contribution made up only 2.7pc of the tax the company paid globally.
Stemcor was founded by Mrs Hodge’s father Hans Oppenheimer more than 60 years ago.
Today, the business claims to be the sixth largest private UK company by turnover. Last year the company, which employs 2,000 people in 45 countries, generated sales of £6bn from trading about 20m tonnes of steel.
The majority of Stemcor’s shares are still controlled by the Oppenheimer family and Mrs Hodge declares a “registrable shareholding” in the company, which is run by her brother Ralph Oppenheimer, executive chairman.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Mrs Hodge defended Stemcor’s behaviour and said that the company had “assured” her it paid “every penny of tax that is owed”, adding that she was only “a very small shareholder”. .."
So as closing the Tax avoidance stance of Ireland is actually a low hanging fruit and could be closed tomorrow, perhaps now you're back you could take a slow stroll to the Dáil Éireann and tell them to be good Europeans and display a proper sense of what's right and wrong..
It would be a great start, wouldn't it...
