Claiming benefits when you're not entitled

[Aprilcherry04]

Was recently at an event with a fairly close friend and we were discussing benefits etc with a few other mums. One of them was talking about EMA and my friend asked if she could claim it for her son who is in sixth form. I said it depends on your income but would expect as they own a successful business they probably wouldn't be eligible. During the conversation it came out that her family get rather high amount of tax credits and also free school meals. I have to admit I was shocked as they are fairly affluent and own several properties. She says they never take money from the business unless it is cash only or they can charge it as expenses. They lead a fairly extravagant lifestyle go on holiday a lot, drive new cars etc. Sometimes my friend would ask why I don't buy expensive branded clothing for my kids and I would say I cant afford it but it never bothered me as I felt her family deserved a nice lifestyle. Also her husband sometimes mocks people who don't work. I know it is not my business but I feel a little disappointed in her as a person and feel like I didn't know her as well as I thought I did. I think I am being unreasonable but just wanted to vent.

They are benefit cheats

Honestly I’m laughing at people who contributed nothing to society (aka the takers) being so outraged that a taxpayer is claiming their own contributions back

Jan...I can only tell you what I know and all I know comes from them.I know not one foot of the system as I don;t claim anything.They said DLA and something about they could get carers allowence for each other too? I would imagine they use the terminology they know.Either way it disgusts me and to think they can stoop so low to get the kids labelled for something is beyond anything I can comprehend.

They will just over pay the mortgage on the rentals do it doesn’t turn a profit
you don't get tax relief on mortgage payments for rentals any more

Oh, please, you should see how they skive out of tax.

LOL @ people who still think adults can get DLA and that ADHD is some made up condition it's easy to get diagnosed with.

Oh look, it's ok to be a benefit cheat if you're middle class and own your own business.
👍

I despise s/e people who cheat the tax system. See it in my line of work constantly and it makes me beyond angry. Declaring the bare minimum to avoid tax/NI, putting everything through as expenses or just working everything in cash with very little paper trail, paying themselves in dividends as you don’t pay tax on them. The system allows them to do, but doesn’t make it morally right. And then on top of that to claim benefits you don’t even need just because you can- when youre actively avoiding putting anything in the system. These people still use the same roads, send their kids to the same skills and would expect to walk into a hospital and expect to be treated. Things like this are part of the reason we are where we are today. But untill the system changes and the rules changes, why wouldn’t you do it if you could eh?

Does EMA still exist?

Yes Bangin** it still exists. SIL got me to help her complete form a couple of weeks ago

Not in England Bangin

Scotland, Wales and NI I think

Sickening isn’t it. I hate benefit fraud.
There are so many loopholes these days that if you have a good accountant you can legally get away with murder. Well in a financial sense.
They may be abiding by the law to some degree but it’s annoying that they are getting benefits that if they told the truth like the rest of us working people they would not be entitled to.

@Aprilcherry04

Sadly there is a lot of nonsense talked about "benefit fraud" some of it talked by those claiming it. I used to work in fraud and the difficulty for "outsiders" who report cases is that - of course - they do not really know the true situation. The most usual case for actual fraud [for people who are working] is for those paid wholly or mainly in cash. Cafe and shop keepers, cleaners and so on and - obviously - not all by any means are fraudulent. It is - in general - very difficult to "prove" even by investigation. There are ways but they involve extensive resources which are even less available now. Mention was made - I think - of rental income from properties. The landlord is that person in whose name the property is "on the deeds". There are good reasons for diversifying so that - for Inheritance Tax for example - members of a family each own a property. The properties would have to be legitimately transferred and - probably - Stamp Duty Land Tax paid. Any rental income/profit would fall to be accounted for by that owner. Even from property it is not the "rent" that would be taken into account for Benefits but the profits after expenses.

If the claimant is a director of their company then the benefit is again based not on profit but upon the amounts paid out of the company as directors' salaries. Where the company makes a profit Corporation Tax is payable and it may be prudent - and quite legitimate - to retain profits within the company for future use.

Yep. I have a (very rich) friend I don't see any more. They have no official income, applied for full student grants for kids, and put the money into ISAs. She thought it was hilarious. "We're entitled to it so why not?" she said.

I thought EM A had finished too.
Nothing doing here, because they are self employed business owners they are encouraged to maximise income, as a pp said they pay accountants.
Poor people who do it out of desperation are the ones we are supposed to hate.

That's awful and I had no idea it was legal. Dh is self employed but he declares everything to the inland revenue. He doesn't earn much so we claim tax credits but we don't get free school meals for the dc because we get working tax credit.

My youngest DGS has just started 6th form and he is entitled to claim £30 ? per week paid into his account monthly to qualify for this he has to have 100% attendance during the month except for any medical appointments which may occur.
This will help my DD as she has to pay out £15.00 for a weekly bus ticket plus pocket monies for him for his personal needs etc.My DD works full time and her UC changes every month as she has to work a week-end every 4 weeks and it affects her payments she is never sure what she will be receiving.I hate bebefit cheats when I see her & other families struggling so much to manage.

@Sallycinammonbangsthedruminthe Totally agree with everything you said about the types of chancers that do that kind of thing. I love those tv programmes where the swines get caught.

Re putting businesses in other people’s names, or could be that they are in the kids names as they wouldn’t be means tested it’s the parents who would? Or a relatives name that doesn’t claim benefits. Or the rental payments go via the Cayman Islands. Or the properties are in trust for the children but they get dividends or bonuses or somesuch. Or simply the parents have secondary bank achcounts where they launder the money? Or a car wash or something that it’s easy to fudge numbers so as not to pay tax. Sigh. I have people like that soooo much. I work like a bastard for every red cent I’ve got. They must be laughing at people like me. But what goes around comes around.....

Poor people who do it out of desperation are the ones we are supposed to hate.

Not just that, but people who claim legitimately because they can't survive otherwise are often berated as lazy, entitled and should go and get a better job.
There's usually pages and pages on threads like this of 'tax payers' outrage and disgust.
The double standards are clear to see.

@Goodlookingcreature It doesn’t really work like that. You sound like you’re condoning benefit fraud, doesn’t say a lot about your morals. Hope you’re not doing it too.

Get on companies house and see the annual return

*Goodlookingcreature

If she owns a business she contributes more than most to the public pot so if she’s entitled to take it back I don’t see the problem*

I know plenty of people who have lucrative businesses and pay virtually no tax as they work out their tax bill and then spend that amount in March. New van, tools....

www.waterstones.com/book/tax-avoidance-for-the-company-director/martin-attis/9780955601712

lots of help for them to keep expenses down

How on earth do pp keep claiming this is legal. If they are taking a decent amount of money out the business, they should be declaring it and paying tax on it (which would make them ineligible for benefits). Same with “their” rental properties - if they are getting rent for properties they own, they should be paying tax. If someone else owns the property, they should be getting the rent.

The idea that somehow high earners can exploit “loopholes” is bollocks. Basically if you are not paying the tax you should, whether it’s because you are claiming expenses which are not actually an expense of your business, or hiding income by getting paid in cash then that’s tax evasion. You might get away with it at least for a while but that doesn’t make it ok.