Millionaire on benefits- rare of course- but is it time for means testing disability benefits

[Flippityflops]

Close friend is a millionaire .
Has not worked since age 40 .
He now has a disability and on his account s advice , he claims non means tested benefits he says .

if this is indeed true- given that such benefits cater for additional expenses of living with a disability, and he absolutely does not need it .. isnt it time that this benefit is means tested in these different times to prioritise the financialy vulnerable.

He for example told me - unsure if its true - that he bought a beautiful 3k painting wirh the money.
it’s gorgeous ive seen it and it dows add value to daily living .

its a bit like the taxpayer is giving him a huge freebie and we cant afford it and those in his income bracket.

Also you'd have to seriously overhaul the whole system if you means test PIP, (and presumably DLA for the under 16s), as PIP is a gateway benefit to lots of other things.

So you'd need a new way for people to indicate that they're disabled but not in receipt of PIP due to means testing, rather than not in receipt due to 'not disabled enough'.

This would be a nightmare, as well as adding further delays to awarding claims (which are already ridiculous) as its not just means testing once, its repeatedly checking on every recipient. DWP already struggle with checking people are still bloody disabled!

I don't think this is a common issue very few people would go throught the absolute hell of claiming pip unless they really need it. It's honestly one of the most stressful things I've ever done and if i won the lottery tomorrow their is absolutely no way i would put myself through that

Which is interesting, because they’ve likely paid in more than most of us as individuals will in taxes. Even after they’ve ’taken out’, it’s probably still more.
Do you also believe they should be excluded from accessing state pension & the NHS?

I’m not trying to be antagonistic btw, I’m just curious.

There will always be anomalies. When we were struggling to pay our parental contribution for uni of 450 a month from our taxed income. (Average earners in London with other children to support). DS’s friend had parents who had retired young through inheritance and lived in a £3million house. They had no ‘income’ so their child got a full grant!
There are issues with our benefits system but not means testing PIP isn’t something I have a problem with. People in the UK are now firmly entrenched in the idea that government has the default responsibility for supporting people in any circumstances and we can’t go back from that.

0 out of 10 for effort.

I can't even say, "nice try", because you are being very transparent.

In Australia all benifits including disability are means tested if you earn above a certain amount you lose your payments the same with public housing that's mean tested too 😊

How many millionaires claim PIP OP? If you want support for the idea of spending more of tax payers money administering a means test, while making disabled people jump through more hoops and forcing those with working spouses lose the little they are entitled to in their own right, then I'd need to know the scale of the problem to assess if the gain is worth the pain. If its just your mate, then you probably have a solution looking for a problem.

This is also true and really important.

Still waiting for them to get that right though, despite however many years of champions like Martin Lewis campaigning to various chancellors. Ditto winter fuel allowance- it’s one thing to take it off wealthy people with six figure incomes, but that’s quite far from where it’s actually cut off. Free school meals…

Can dickheads just leave disabled people alone please? Seriously. I can’t speak for all disabled people, but the ones I’m friends with/related to have enough going on in their lives without being constantly attacked for all the oodles of wonderful benefits they may or may not get because of their disability.

Just fuck off.

Might copy and paste this for all the other threads I see like this on this site. There’s at least one every bloody day.

The government know that all benefit money goes back into the economy paying VAT and corporation tax on company profits from revenue of those things bought with benefit money. They are not "losing" that money.

there is a millionaire not far from us, he claims full pip and his family uses his mobility car, while he drives his Bentley.

mean while im worrying about my DS future after the changes for PIP was announced

How do people know stuff like this? I’m not saying you’re lying btw I honestly mean how do you know? Do people tell other people this stuff freely? In RL I mean.

I wouldn’t dream of asking other people what their income consists of. If anyone asked me I’d tell them (and have actually- nothing to do with my ex whether or not I claim UC for example) to mind their own business.

My son will be moving over to PIP in a couple of years. I’m worried about that because of the reforms they’re apparently making. But not enough to be pissed off with others who are entitled to it claim it.

I like the principle of universal benefits for people meetng the disability criteria.

.Unless the millionaire is living in a million pound house that waa bought in the 70s gor 50p, and he has no income other than pip, he will be paying plenty of tax to offset it.

Same, I found it incredibly traumatic to have to sit there and explain to a random assessor that sometimes my DH has to help me shower, and cut my food, and on a bad day I struggle to wipe my own bottom, especially as it is an acquired disability that I'm still coming to terms with having. If we won big on the lottery I definitely wouldn't re apply when the time comes for it to be reassessed.

The vast majority of disability benefits are means tested.

the exceptions (in England) are DLA for children, PIP for new claimants over 16 and under pension age (although claims can be continued beyond pension age) and Attendance Allowance.

everything else has been integrated into universal credit and is thus means tested. I think the migration over to universal credit is now pretty much complete so there should be very few if any people left on legacy benefits.

PIP is not an income replacement benefit. Never was. It's a benefit to help with disability. In much the same way the NHS is a benefit (in kind) to help with illness. So, if we are going to say that there is a point of wealth at which disabled people should no longer be helped via PIP, is there also a point of wealth when sick people should no longer be helped by the NHS? So we have disabled and ill people forced to spend down their money to a suitable level of modesty of means before state help kicks in? And where would we set that? Because if push comes to shove, a lot of us could afford medical care if we tightened our belts, gave up our holidays, downsized and saved harder.

David Cameron claimed dla for his disabled child and plenty voted for him.

Prince Charles claims the Sovereign Grant despite being worth £640 MILLION

The very rich are very rich because they don’t spend their own money.

Ive stated before every single penny AND MORE of my sons PIP is spent on continence products that the average person is fully surprised is not supplied by the NHS. That doesnt even then include the added cost of being disabled.
The extra money spent for 30+ hospital admissions a year, the extra cost of washing and drying, costs of special food, costs of entertaining an ill child.

I get PIP and that goes to pay our household bills. If it was stopped (i dont know if we'd be suddenly over or under a means tested threshold as DH earning potential has also been limited by having 2 disabled family members) we would be homeless in about 2 months.
So a bigger drain on the taxpayer.....would we be lesser then or would threads on MN feel sorry for the family on the street?
Nevermind im being silly....it was all our fault in the first place for not working hard enough at being a high tax payer.

Just checking my records oh I was a high tax payer until I became ill, oh I didnt cause my illness.....whats that it can happen to anyone, even a snarky screen warrior on MN? And disabled children can decimate a families earning power but you wouldn't have it any other way.....ahhhh and yet again its not something you can plan for in a lot of circumstances.

They arent coming for you..but you cant be sure you won't be us.

Ah right. So your memory of Chelsea and Kensington (sic) council dishing out benefits to celebrities might be a teeny bit inaccurate.

As I said, LA's have never administered benefits other than housing benefit. Which is means tested. So unless the celebrities were on a low income, they would not be getting HB.

I am disabled and I wouldn’t qualify for non means-tested benefits. I don’t claim PIP but I have toyed with the idea, not because I want the money, but because there are sometimes situations where I can’t access support for my disability without being on PIP. For example, I can’t buy an accessible ticket for a concert which often means that I can’t go.

It feels wrong, well it is wrong, for me to claim taxpayer’s money that I don’t need, but my world is becoming very small. I still need help in areas of my life, and PIP seems to be the only ticket to getting support.

Ha, EB worsens the more you walk (more pain, more blister wounds, more bleeding feet etc.) There's no way I could physically walk anywhere close to 4 miles without knackering my ability to walk for days.

Making me do that to try and justify my standard rate mobility PIP would probably help boost me from 10 points to the 12 needed for enhanced rate mobility PIP 😂

Exactly this. I was a high earner myself until my youngest child was born disabled. So yes, he gets DLA and I now get carers allowance, but before that I was paying £3k a month in tax. I put my share in.
Noone expects to become disabled, or to have a disabled child, but it happens. And it could happen to anyone. Our household income basically halved over night. As I said above we could live without the money but a) the DLA gives us access to other vital services that we wouldn’t be able to access otherwise, b) the money will be used to pay for things that someone who isn’t disabled doesn’t have to pay for (or even think about) and c) the meagre carers allowance is a tiny percentage of what I was earning pre having a disabled child but gives me a very small amount of my own income.

Sounds likely!

It is funny, but when I see someone use the phrase "mobility" car, I always doubt their story. Especially one edited in this way.