Friend fraudulantly claiming tax credits as a single mum

[OrangeFlower7]

I am getting increasingly exasperated with hearing the woeful stories from my friend - she and her husband 'split up' at the start of the year but are now back together / still living together. She is always saying how skint she is, since getting married (was a single mum beforehand) as her tax credits claim stopped. So, when they split up, she started a new claim as a single parent with a low income. He has a full-time well paid job. So now they get housing benefit for their 1.1K/month rental house, a high tax credits award of about 10K plus his money from his job...it just seems a bit unfair for her to keep moaning on when we've been struggling with DH being made redundant and getting by on some self-employment but really trying hard each month to get the money together for the mortgage bills etc.

WWYD? What should i say next time she moans on? Do you think, I should report them for tax credits fraud?!

Fuck me. £200+/week as a gift from the govt for help? And HB? No wonder this country is broke.

Your friend is doing the oldest trick in the book. Loads of people/women claim as single parents then live with their partners/boyfriends on the sly. If you don't say anything you're letting the govt haemorrhage more cash towards people who don't genuinely need it.

Honestly some of the posters on this thread must think the govt grows money on trees and seem to forget that funds are finite and paid by the public. I want the 1k I contributed last month alone to NI and tax going to people with real need - not too much to ask!!! La la la...

As someone who is paying for your friend's benefits, is in debt, who works all the hours God kindly sends, I say please report her.

catsize and anyone else late to this thread.....the OP came back and pointed out that she hasn't known all the facts. The partner/husband is NOT in fact living there but elsewhere.....so no fraud being committed. The OP said she had got her facts wrong.

Easy to see what you THINK is happening and to judge but sometimes things are not as they appear.

I think more than anything the language of the OP irritated me. It is full of assumptions about how much this woman might get in HB or tax credits. In fact as the OP later discovered she had NO idea of the facts and her assumptions were wrong.

I am not flaming the OP here as she has been fed the same propaganda as everyone else and eventually mud sticks so that even intelligent people start to believe the rhetoric. In this case the OP has discovered that her friend is not in fact defrauding anyone but going through a genuinely hard time.

William, we have met in other threads and I know your background is not the UK. all I can say is that in the UK our society is based upon supporting those who cannot support themselves.....and yes I realise we can have a whole other debate about that.

Okay jakebullet but remember you are hardly objective on these threads. You come onto all the threads about benefits to fight against people making generalizations about people on benefits and discuss your plight. This does skew your outlook significantly.

My world view may be different but it's no less valid. I support a country supporting others but I believe we are overspending and don't believe in the level of govt that the UK thinks is the norm. It's excessive and cannot be retained.

By the way other countries do support their people - the UK isn't unique in its welfare state nor its NHS.

By the way how do we know that the friend didn't fib to the OP because she was either embarassed or didn't want to get caught out?

Ye I will concede that but I am proud of being within a society which support it's weakest. I don't like generalisations, not least because as some one who currently HAS to claim benefits that just isn't ME they are describing. I think everyone has a story..

I have NO time for those who deliberately set out to defraud the system and they deserve all they get.

Yes the OP's friend could have lied...but fact is that we don't know and we shouldn't be judging her. If the OP wants to be sure then she needs to report and let the authorities work it out.

I would report benefit fraud if I knew it was happening. I don't know anyone where that is the case tough.....not that I know many people on benefits.

...and yes, I do get riled on these threads....a bit oversensitive perhaps. I DO care about the weaker members of society though...I volunteer with families where there is a lot of unemployment. In addition to a lack of jobs are other issues....am amazed about how many people I come across who cannot read or write adequately in their own language Part of my voluntary role is to help people access literacy courses etc. It is good to see people make positive changes.

I sound like a real proper Left winger don't I ...but I am not, I refuse to nail my colours to any mast and will vote for whoever is offering the best policies at the time. I have voted for all three of the main political parties at one time or another.

Report her if only to make things fairer for me
I have no objection to my taxes supporting genuine claimants, but not fraudsters.

Is she a real friend?

If so I wouldn't....

I will think twice before I post to a similar topic about "should I, shouldn't I" report someone - I'm more than likely to suggest to the OP to please not ask for opinions, but to just go away and validate their facts, and then decide for themselves.

I cannot see the point (and in future I will feel skeptical) in contributing towards a debate based on purely circumstantial assumptions which are posed as "facts", which may well be no more than a hypothetical situation.

Yes, I am pleased the OP decided to check their facts with their friend, and had the good grace to come back and update us on this thread. However, I found it frustrating, especially for such an immotive and divisive subject like benefits, benefits fraudsters (or not, as the case may be). There are too many imponderables and variables for it to be black-and-white.

There are loads of generalisations on all sides - those nasty Tory's, politicians being cheating b%&*$"s on excessive wages, people on benefits all having flat-screen TV's (I always laugh at that - why TV's? and why flat-screen? who knows, who cares.....) - that is what I mean by lazy thinking. Its just too easy to slip into those hackney'ed associations.

I'm not unsympathetic, but I think we do have a generous enough benefits system for people in genuine need to be helped. The Government do not make any money - they take our tax money and spend it. There needs to be a way to check for eligibility and people grumbling about it doesn't alter that need.

Actually think she may have been fibbing, he rang and I heard her checking he had his key to get in- then turned up asking what they should do for dinner!

I have come to think though, if she was reported it would probably be him getting away with it though he could just go off to his mates whereas my friend would be left with the consequenses. I don't think it's right though.

I have to say, I did wonder when I read your update if that really was the whole story.

I am back to my position of reporting her, then. The consequences - well if that means she loses money she isn't entitled to then they are fair consequences. If the husband just wants to freeload, he will have to either also face te consequences or move out properly and pay his way elsewhere.

Personally, I wouldn't report anyone as it's none of my business.
Ask yourself this if you did report your friend could you honestly look her in the eye again. xx

International The voice of reason

So, all those saying they'd report would be willing to see her go to Jail and dc may go into care etc, if her dh is involved and goes down too.
I certainly wouldn't want that on my conscience. but I'd rather bother about my own business.

OK so she's my friend though. I think she wants rid of him. If she asks/confides in me again, I think I'll encourage her to get him to move out properly. Then she can get on with her life, and get him paying proper maintenence. Not that it's my business reallly. I just don't really want to see her get into trouble, and I admit I was a bit cross when I wrote the OP. Yes morethan maybe i should focus more on my own problems, really.

I will think twice before I post to a similar topic about "should I, shouldn't I" report someone - I'm more than likely to suggest to the OP to please not ask for opinions, but to just go away and validate their facts, and then decide for themselves.

I know the OP has come back and said she doesn't believe her friend's story so this is less relevant than it was, but I think this is a sensible approach.

The benefits system in this country is massively complex. Who can claim what and how much is often misunderstood mostly by people who haven't ever claimed, but also by people who are claiming and surprisingly often by the people who are administering the claims. There is already at least one misconception on this thread and there are many others in the public domain.

Even the DWP admit that the number of fraudulent claims is small and the majority of claimants who are investigated are found not to be making fraudulent claims. I suspect most of those will be made by people who thought they were 'doing the right thing' but whose idea of fraud was based on their own misunderstanding.

Some on here will think this is fine, after all 'what's the worst that can happen'. But unless it's a routine compliance check they can and do stop your benefits and any related benefits. And we're not talking a system that works in days here, it can take months. Meanwhile, there's no food in the cupboard and you're building up rent arrears. If you're lucky you'll still have a roof over your head and your landlord won't kick you out.

That, IMO, is why MNers advise people not to report unless they are completely 100% sure. It's not because they think that the people committing fraud should get away with it.

In my case, after 5 months I was reduced to going down to the job centre and literally begging someone to do something because despite almost daily phone calls to DWP I had £2.50 left before I reached my overdraft limit, the rent was due the following day, I had one tin of beans left and I'd just put the last 50p in the electric meter. It took a further 8 weeks to get the HB reinstated.

Wow, sorry. That was a bit epic .

Clay, that was a brilliant post. I have never been in a position of wondering if to report someone thankfully. I have two friends claiming benefits but both doing so legitimatly.

I have never thought through what would happen but given your experience I would now think twice. Terrible experience to go through for you....and it seems they acted first and asked questions later leaving you in a dreadful position.

Looking back, what I find worse is that I'm well educated and have a reasonable knowledge of the benefits system due to voluntary work I did in the past. If I can't get the DWP to do anything when I know they are not following their own procedures and am being given incorrect info then I dread to think what it might be like for others.

I had all the paperwork I needed and more to prove my claim and that the mistake was theirs. It only got sorted when it did because of the woman in the job centre who said she would sort it that day and would get them to pay at least some of the money with in 48hrs and all of the backdated 5 months within 10 days and stayed late to do so. If by any chance that woman is a MNer I don't think I ever thanked you enough for that.

Butting in on this late in the thread - I agree with CLAY The benefits system is very complex and not even those working in the actual departments, whatever dept that may be, seem to properly understand it all. Tax Credits for example have given me three different reasons/explanations for one thing over the last 4 weeks and have now all but admitted I have to wait until September 1st for the 'system' to update and award correct amount of cash. They are relying on a computer to sort it out, they can't make sense of it themselves until it does. Bonkers.

For this reason I would be careful if thinking of reporting a person because the lady in question may be entitled to this cash, nobody knows for certain 100% she is not and reporting her might suspend payments until an investigation is completed which can take months. Then its her children that go without.
Its a moral nightmare really as false claimants are the reason genuine benefit claimants get a terrible reputation and the benefit bashing which is today common place.

Where possible op and I do not mean this unkindly, you are better off just concentrating on your own life. Because you rarely get thanks for butting into another's life, even when you think you are doing good! I don't do much for others anymore because it tends to leave a sting in the tail, unless I am actually asked for help/advice, I keep it shut. Society is sensitive about money today and especially, benefits.
If your friend is doing wrong, let her carry on because it never really goes unanswered. Somebody will report her, they won't think twice about it as you have but that won't be you so you will have a clear conscience.

I think that's awful, that the benefits can be stopped during an investigation. Why not wait to see if anything is untoward before doing that? Yes, it would harm the people claiming honestly as they wouldn't have any 'fallback'. Very wrong.