Benefit hatred is out of control.

[carernotasaint]

www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/owen-jones-hatred-of-those-on-benefits-is-dangerously-out-of-control-7763793.html

Oh and No, I think BOTH people who falsify benefit claims and people who falsify tax forms are equally dishonest.

To me that comment shows how successful the DWP (Iain D-S et al) have been in planting the seeds in the press that there are thousands and thousands of benefit cheats out there. It's propaganda to deflect from the huge, unfair and disgusting cuts that are being made to eg DLA.

The actual figure of people cheating DLA is something like 0.5% of claimants.

But is one single person really creating thousands of jobs? I can't think of any one individual who you could say is doing that.

Philip Green"....helped his wife purchase the ailing retail chain British Home Stores for £200 million. His takeover came when everyone else had dismissed the company as a failing brand and unfixable. Green put up £50 million of his own money and borrowed another £150 million to seal the deal. Green completely turned the company around and the chain is now thought to be worth over £1.2 billion. Since Green took over, profits have tripled to over £200 million per year."

Oh the Philip Green whose company Arcadia is in his wife's name. And his wife lives in Monaco so avoids paying tax in the UK?

In 2005 Philip Green awarded himself £1.2bn, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. But this dividend payout was channeled through a network of offshore accounts, via tax havens in Jersey and eventually to Green?s wife?s Monaco bank account. The dodge saved Green, and cost the tax payer, close to £300m.

That Philip Green?

Yes - he has done more for the UK than Des on the dole... or the rest of us.

(NB: i doubt if id like him personally but that is irrelevant)

Why should Philip Green, or anyone else, pay more tax than they have to? If I could save £300 I would do so, so damn right I would take steps to save £300 million. Philip Green's companies still contribute a fortune to the exchequer. And the public sector is still massively wasteful.

The reality is that Philip Green uses his wife to avoid tax because it pays to do it. It isn't the right thing to do but the pay off is huge. Our MPs should be addressing these issues. Personally I think someone who runs a company should only pay taxes on distributions and not on profit. They are taking huge risks and their actions, should the company be profitable, are very beneficial to society.

Also, the dividend that Philip Green paid himself was the result of putting debt on the company. I wasn't impressed by that but I am impressed at what he has done with TopShop.

?Is it a kindness to stick people in some factory where they are not doing any work at all? Just making cups of coffee?

Was his exact words.

The point of the benefit system is to provide support when unpredictable disasters happen to people, so we amortise the risk across the whole of society. The point of the taxation system is so that profits are also amortised (to a degree) in order to support this structure.

It seems that we are heading towards a system where risk has to be borne by the individual, and so are profits, so an accident or disaster can wipe out the capital accrued by several generations of a family, leaving them with nothing. Like the US.

I don't think most of us buy into this. When the last person leaves the UK as it turns into a crueller version of the US, could they turn the lights out?

So because PG can get away without paying the £3m he owes on tax, he should do so?

Just like how those tiny tiny tiny minority of benefit cheats can get away with whatever spurious and probably non-existent defrauding the system, so therefore they should do so?

How blinking hypocritical. On one hand slagging off 'des on the dole' and on the other admiring PG for the same thing but on a much much bigger scale.

I myself wouldn't fraudulently do anything, claim benefit if I wasn't entitled to it, or defraud the inland revenue. But that's just me

Philip Green isn't sat on his arse getting money for nothing, is he?

And people on DLA are?

There will be more of this

And neither are the millions of people working and paying the taxes that they owe.

No-one is saying he's lazy. Just that he's defrauding the UK of £££ in taxes. And that if this current govt is genuine about 'austerity measures' they would do better to put their attention to him and others like him rather than say wasting millions on eg getting disabled people to undergo reassassements to see whether their lifelong disability has suddenly gone away.

And planting stories in the DM etc about benefit cheats to inculcate unjustified and bigotted prejudice against anyone unlucky enough to be unemployed or disabled.

Philip Green is not defrauding, he is exploiting legal structures to minimise his tax bill. At present, it is perfectly lawful. I can't see why you would have a go a him. His business employs thousands of people and I assume he pays employers, national insurance on salaries, his employees contribute NICs and tax and he will pay whatever corporation taxes are due.

You've got to give people an incentive to create wealth for the benefit of the wider economy. Nobody benefits from people being economically inactive.

I'm not fucking economically inactive - I employ people. Using my DLA care allowance!

Unlike my DB, whose rather larger income also comes from the taxpayer, via a private company which has a government contract.

He channels his corporation tax abroad so he pays less.

And even his own employees have protested against him fgs here

I didn't bring him up - he was mentioned below as a shining example of a multi-millionaire tax avoider who brings huge benefits to UK citizens by employing them just don't mention the sweatshops in the far east. I was pointing out that he's not really the best example of a fair society

I think they should probably go after Amazon and their little Luxemborg tax haven - you should not be able to divert your income and thus tax burden to another country when the money was earned and collected by a business in this one.

I think it's about fairness. People want Philip Green to pay a fair amount of tax compared to his income. At least 40%. It's interesting that the Victorians had this kind of dilemma too and the philanthropists of their day started huge charitable works, hospitals, orphanages etc... can't see rich folks doing that these days. The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many!

Here is a cogent argument from someone who is an entrepreneur, saying that entrepreneurs aren't wealth creators at all. And note also that there have been some high-profile rich people (Warren Buffett, Stephen King) arguing recently that they do, too, have a responsibility to pay more tax - they are precisely arguing that the laws that allow them and people like them to pay so little tax are wrong and immoral.

Philip Green is not paying national insurance on salaries when hes got people in his stores on workfare because when they are there under duress he isnt paying the fucking salary to start with.

"Why should i work my arse off to pay for someone else to watch Jeremy Kyle all day"
"Please dont believe everything you read"

Well you obviously believe some of the stuff (propaganda) you have read otherwise you wouldnt have written your Jeremy Kyle comment.
Think youve contradicted yourself a bit there.

www.tayfm.co.uk/news/dundee-family-hit-out-after-dwp-letter/
Here you are - here's one of your DLA "frauds" - want to work out what kind of job he could do?

I have never heard of any violence being perpetrated against people because they are on benefits.

I have heard of a lot of people ON benefits perpetrating violence, and it's an obviously a licence for a very visible, unpleasant minority, to behave in a way no civil society should tolerate, simply because benefits are an unimpeachable right.

Now unless we've got a shred of evidence of 'benefit hatred' resulting in violence, I think this whole thing is completely ridiculous.

How about we consider the fact that a friend of mine, a very nice family, had a family of Pakistani drug dealers housed next to their council house, and when they complained about them parking in their drive they slashed their tyres, and basically put them in fear of their lives.

To say that the elephant in the room here is 'benefit hatred', on the basis of some twat of a journalist speculating about the remarks made by some utter shit of another journalist, is just ridiculous.

Philip Green my arse.

He who pays his employees the minimum wage and therefore have to top up their wages with tax credits just to have an income to live on.

Explain precisely how he should be lauded? Bloke should be ashamed of himself. Does he even do anything charitable like Bill Gates does? Oh yes he provides workfare for Kate Moss.....