to have reported my "friend" for benefit fraud

[buttercupp]

ok so cant go into too much detail for obvious reasons but i have a friend (not know for long but lives near me) and i have been debating for a while now whether to report her or not for living with her partner who is also claiming as living alone.

so today i have done it finally after being fed up of hearing what other electrical applicance they have bought with the stupid amount of money they have been given when my DH is out at work slogging his guts out just to make ends meet.

The reason i havent done it before is like i say she is supposed to be my friend,we have had nights out together and she has a baby so have felt a bit bad in that respect too but i knew i had to do the right thing.
would i be a hypocrite to continue to be her friend or should i avoid her from now on? i do like the girl just dont agree with what she was doing.and anyone know what will happen now i have reported her?

Yes it is, because a crime does not need a conviction to have been committed, 100% standby that.

But this is my huge blimming point. People who are genuine, people who go through hell to claim sickness benefit, people who get hounded by hb as they don't think they have been truthfull, re living together, those that get maliciously reported.

Those who do really commit fraud make things horrible for those that don't as it has to be followed up, everyone is treated with suspicion, so report the feckers that make it hard for the genuine, if someone is bragging about it as per the op, they are asking for it.

It is similar to those who maliciously report people to social services just to cause grief, which happens a lot, it dosen't mean you shouldn't report suspected child abuse incase it's nothing.

I don't see any big government campaigns to report tax evasion though..easy to target the benefit claimants, and people buy into the outrage ,as has been already said you are doing as you are told .

YANBU - this woman is abusing the benefit system, knowingly breaking the law, and claiming money that honest people - like your hard-working husband - are providing through taxes. I am on maternity leave at the moment but work for Jobcentre Plus and you would be amazed by how many people making fraudulent claims see it as 'easy' money and think that as they aren't hurting anybody, it's okay. Believe me, she will be getting enough money for her family to survive on. The amount of times I've interviewed people who have sat there and complained that they don't have enough money to feed their family, and yet they have enough gold chains around their neck to rival Mr T, fags in their pocket and the latest mobile phone. The people who are struggling tend to be the ones working in low paid jobs, not those on benefit. Don't avoid her, it will look suspicious. But don't feel bad for a moment.

This has really interested me because i have been stressing recently as to whether i should report someone i know for working and earning over £300 per month when they are claiming everything including housing benefit.

She was a friend of mine and i told her she was out of order working and claiming but recently she has been unimpressed with the fact my dh told her dh to get off his lazy ass and get a job so now she doesn't really speak much.

but i have been stewing on this for sometime and now feel i really should do it or should i????

No I am just as outraged that tax evasion goes unmarked in fact I think you'll find that POV in the tax rebate/claw back fiasco thread. That the govt should actually be focussing more on tax evasion than benefit fraud as the amounts involved are huge in comparison.

So I am not doing as I am told, I can think for myself, I detest criminality on every level, especially when it affects others, as tax evasion and benefit fraud does, it's stealing, it's that simple. I can detest both.

Tax evasion costs us a hell of a lot more money, benefit fraud costs us less money, it still costs though and makes things harder for genuine claiments. I detest both.

I'm not talking about you emmyloulou ..I'm talking about the majority on this thread,who would not report white collar tax evasion because its not out there on every bloody bill board ,but would report someone with a bigger tv than them ..hypocrites much

Oh I see, well yes tax evasion is a much bigger cost financially than benefit fraud that is a definate fact and the govt should be pushing that just as hard.

We always get huge benefit fraud exposed on the back of a Labour government leaving office, because they make benefits too generous and turn a blind eye to people gaming the system. They are backhanding to their core vote.

Tories focus away from tax evasion (though not this time by the looks of things) because it is normally their mates who are doing it. They are backhanding to their core vote.

Who is in power now?

We've had 13 years of free running benefit payments under NuLabour, and its now completely out of control. Everyone is on the fiddle - this board just goes to show. You can pick the cheats out very easily and they better hope no-one reports this thread to HMRC

So now Labour are GONE, its time for 13 years of tax loopholes. Its only fair :)

Ccpccp, I can assure you that I am not on the fiddle and am in fact struggling now that DS is at nursery and I have to find £17 a week in bus fares (that's provided I don't get the bus home and then another one to pick him up). I walk in the park or go to the local shopping centre to read the paper when its wet.

I suppose I could just cut back on the sky subscription, holiday to Spain or the amount of alcopops I binge on at the weekend. Whoops forgot, I don't actually have any of these things, that only exists in the pages of the Daily Fail.

The cheap shot that all who disagree with reporting benefit fraud are on the fiddle makes me laugh ..HMRC not the brightest bunch are they

Benefit fraud is small fry compared to tax evasion but easier to prove.

Cos those on benefit fraud cannot afford the lawyers / flounce off to the Caymen Islands / aren't members of the House of Lords and don't hang out with members of the government.

Glad for the anonymity here or I'd be carted off to the workhouse and my whelp put up a chimney before you could say Lord Ashcroft.

Benefit fraud is easier to chase. Problem is - it hasnt been chased nearly hard enough.

Tax 'evasion' on the other hand was Gordon Browns favourite class-warfare tool. He tried to blur the lines between avoidance and evasion, equating them both to rich people robbing the treasury. He employed quangos to dream up huge figures of revenue 'lost' that was never his anyway. He brought in swathes of legislation that allowed the HMRC to 'clarify' tax rules TODAY and issue demands for years of back tax, bankrupting people overnight who had followed the tax law to the letter. He used every mean underhanded draconian trick he could against small business and enterprise, just so long as he didnt have to raise the headline rate of income tax or cut benefits to his favourites.

Gone now though hasnt he :)

(Lord Ashcrost is completely tax legal. Labour election smear campaign that has died since they lost power)

Err, I can't visualise tradespeople that do cash in hand work flouncing off to the cayman islands or hanging out with MPs. I think yet again the difference between tax evasion and avoidance is being misunderstood.

For the record, evasion is illegal, avoidance is not.

Oh I know that he's completely tax legal, just think that members of the government should live here and pay taxes like the rest of us.

I think he does live here Dione, and pays a fair whack out in tax. His wife doesnt though

You will see this happening more and more as business goes global. 'Tax shopping' I think they call it - locating to the tax regime that offers the best deal. If the UK wants to compete, it needs to slash business red tape and tax. We are already being undercut by many of our EU partners and most of the rest of the world.

I cannot believe the amount of posters on this here thread who are trying to justify benefit fraud!!!!

OP. YANBU. You did the right thing IMO. Ignore people who are trying to criminilise you for reporting it. Birds of a feather flock together

i dont think its a case of birds of a feather flocking together....more a case of some people having differing opinions and thinking a bit further than some,about implications and the finer details.....

emmyloulou- What kind of job was it your friend turned down because of her living arrangments? I've never heard of having to declare your living arrangments to employers? I thought it was illegal for employers to ask about marital status e.t.c

Anyway, back to the op, YANBU, I can't stand benefit cheats, especially those that play the single mother card, when they have live in partners.
Theres loads of them in my area at it, and yes, THEY DO have big TV'S, kids running riot in £80 Nike trainers (about half a dozen kids each family, all with different surnames!), and it pisses me off, when I work really hard and pay my own way, and my DS doesn't have all the flashy stuff the scroungers brats have
I have reported the lot of them, and in some of the cases, justice has been done, and their not so flashy and smug now!!!

There are MANY jobs out there where you need security clearance, which can be as basic as a credit check and and a background check or more in depth.

So straight away it would highlight discrepancies with their official living arrangements, which she wanted people to lie about so knowingly accept and deal with a false declaration as she didn't want to go legit. She wanted the people concerned to falsify these references to back her up as a single parent when she wasn't.......then had an absolute hissy fit, when people wouldn't falsify this information for her......

ccp - you say benefits are too generous. Do you know how much a single unemployed person has to live on?

You don't have to be a fraudster to object to the idea that everyone on benefits is a scrounger, or to think going behind a supposed friend's back is pretty underhand.

Petty jealousy and snooping are vices, not virtues.

A single unemployed person? Hardly anything.

I know that were I made redundant, I would get next to no help from the state.

However, were I to wangle some IB angle into it, bad back or something, and have a few kids, blag a council house or maybe just push for a nice rental place I could never afford to be covered by HB, then I'd be sitting pretty.

no you wouldn't, the new test they are bringing in for incapacity is apparently throwing the majority of people off benefit - because if you aren't actually crawling on your hands and knees, clearly you are a layabout and conditions such as Multiple Sclerosis as just figments of your imagination. According to our new dear rulers. (That'd be the ones who think breaking the law is fine if you happen to be David Cameron's press secretary...)

The feigning a bad back to get IB is a total myth ccp. I'm surprised you swallow DM stories with such gullibility.