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Post by Steve on Dec 16, 2022 22:40:12 GMT
Oh flying fuck, guilty as charged  I'd blame the cat that likes to dab at my keyboard but even I think he's innocent this time. I thought you'd spalled it with a Coventry accent... I was sent to Coventry you say?  I'm nearly 70 and Coventry is possibly the most major city in Britain I've never seen. I can get over this. But I digress |
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Post by johnofgwent on Dec 23, 2022 8:46:30 GMT
Quoting a figure without any context is pretty pointless. 3%-4% lost to fraud / error is actually pretty good, and you would probably spend more than you would save trying to get the figure closer to zero. Uncollected taxes are double that rate at 6%-8%. The thing is that the rate of fraud is determined mainly by actual cases of fraud that the DWP find. And naturally that's dependent on how efficient their fraud detection department is. But they've been gradually "relaxing" fraud checking over the years - and especially during the pandemic. Considering the huge amount of money that is given away by the DWP (over £200 billion) it doesn't have to be a high rate of fraud to lose vast amounts of money. And the actual rate of fraud is certainly higher than the figure that is being quoted. The difference between the figures quoted by HMRC and those quoted by DWP is that HMRC use statistical methods to calculate the rate of fraud. In other words they do random checks to come up with a figure of total fraud and these checks are very intrusive. There's reason to believe that their figures are reasonably reliable. The DWP does some random checks but they're in the form of half hour telephone calls. Their powers to interrogate people seem to be less than HMRC has. I’m only going to reply to the last part. My youngest who is one of those with the delightful job of doing that interrogating would disagree with you on the powers and stamina they have. But she would point out, as would I, that the DWP have to work with the information provided to them by the applicant, whereas for over a hundred years now it has been the established norm that the tax man can stick their fingers in their arse hole, count the lumps that stuck after they removed them, multiply that by a random number and send you a demand for that many thousands of pounds in unpaid tax based on nothing more than a whim, and it becomes YOUR legal responsibility in tax law to either pay that sum demanded, based on no factual evidence whatsoever related directly to you, OR PROVE YOUR INNOCENCE at a tribunal. I’ve won two such and lost one. After that I used the simple measure of inviting the tax man accusing me of a fourth imagined transgression to the submarine base I was working at. He demanded to be let in as I knew the fuckwit would, and the rather heavily armed men at the base gate took him away. He never bothered me again other than to say his error in his recent communication had been ‘explained’ to him. Hopefully at gunpoint and with the use of rubber gloves to assess the operation of his estimation process. |
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