Social security spending out of control?

[Wizeman]

The UK spends about £334 billion on social security. Around £177 billion of that goes on pensions, which as a young person I’d definitely want when I’m older — especially if I’ve worked all my life and paid into the system. What I don’t understand is why some younger people are against older people getting a pension, because one day they’ll want one too.

About £145 billion goes towards working-age benefits, which is a massive amount of money. Around £76 billion of that is for disabled people, which I think is fair and necessary. But you hear so many stories about people taking advantage of the system, and a lot of those stories turn out to be true.

They say about 1 in 3 people in Britain are on some kind of benefit. I’ve personally been in hospital with serious injuries and had operations that put me out of work for months, and it never crossed my mind to claim benefits. I’ve also been out of work for about a year before while working towards getting a new job, and I just lived off my savings.

That said, I’ll be honest — I’ve always had support from my parents, like being able to stay at their house. I know not everyone has that kind of support.

But it does feel like fewer people want to work and some would rather claim benefits.
I also don’t think removing the two-child benefit cap will really solve the problem.
In Poland, for example, people get tax breaks for having kids, which encourages people to work.

Either way, £334 billion just sounds like an insane amount of money to me.

But pensioners who have that level of income will be paying significant amounts of tax. Personally I wouldn’t remove people from being able to receive a pension, I think it would have far worse effects. Like a PP said, people would stop making provision for retirement, people would feel more resentful. The people with these levels of pension have most likely been net contributors for a very many years.

ive got three decades til my pension at least, and id be very cross if it got means tested

No, you have to have "earned" NIC credits, which can be accumulated by being on benefits, being part time on low wages, being a carer for young children, etc. So, no, there's no actual link between "paying" NIC and getting a state pension.

In which case their state pension is recovered in the tax they pay.

Where are the facts?
HMRC state that around 7.4 billion is taken in benefit fraud.
in comparison around 5.5 billion is lost in tax evasion.
Both are shocking.

A quick search gives a figure of about £45 billion for Tax Evasion compared with £9.5 billion for Social Security Fraud AND ERROR - and believe you me the DWP excel in not looking at whats in front of them!

Semantics. Tax avoidance is actually £46 billion. Proves my point.

The poor and the middle class pay taxes
The Rich pay accountants
The very rich pay lawyers
The super rich pay politicians

George Monbiot

My figures come from HMRC.
where do your figures come from?
It is also estimated that benefit fraud is much greater than quoted, involving criminal gangs.

HMRC.

As I said, you're using semantics. You can take the tax fraud figures or you can take the tax avoidance figures. Tax avoidance is just as bad as benefit fraud of course.

Excellent post.

I’ll just leave this here.

tax avoidance is permitted tax evasion is illegal

That’s spectacular point missing.

Not it isn't, legal tax "planning" includes things like investing in ISAs, or pensions, or a business claiming a specific tax relief for R&D expenditure etc. It encompasses a whole host of reliefs and allowances specifically created to encourage certain behaviours.

Tax evasion is illegal, i.e. not declaring income, or illegally claiming expenses, or claiming reliefs/allowances you're not entitled to.

There's a very clear difference. Yet, HMRC made a decision to muddy the waters a few years ago by muddling up the "avoidance" and "planning" into one, so they're basically trying to fiddle the figures by including perfectly legal planning, reliefs and allowances as "avoidance" which they make out is wrong, when in fact a lot of it was actually encouraged by successive governments!

Illegal evasion is what matters. Just like illegal benefit fraud. Ie people lying whether on tax returns or on benefit claim forms. They really can't get away with bringing "behaviour" into things when it's actual legal.

But they will still have paid in a lot more than those that have never/rarely worked. 🙄

Much of that will be housing costs. Going straight into private landlords pockets

Well some will or are you saying every current pensioner worked?

It’s just maths & no need to be offended. When demographics were pyramid shaped it wasn’t an issue.

Think about the average salary & the tax paid on that & then the state pension, life expectancy. The maths doesn’t work when the demographics change.

The point was that non payment of tax costs considerably more than benefit fraud. You’ve missed it too. 🤷‍♀️

Unfortunately only some of this is true. Believe it or not, our immigration economic modelling does not actually take into account all the costs of immigration. It looks at a four year cycle for net contribution immediately upon entry according to what job you do then, so it doesn’t cost in the fact that people might stay and require elderly care, pensions etc (and they are very likely to when they are non away migrants. Even for EU migrants, there was a massive undercosting because no one accounted for the fact that many Eastern European families came and settled and has kids). It says “you’re a young person now, so you contribute x per year”. Our NHS does not record statistics on how much treatment people on visas have. Shabana Mahmood has recognised this. It’s actually a complicated picture with a lot of failures in recording and analysing data.

Immigrants working on minimum wage jobs eg carers pay almost no tax

No, they make their contribution to society in other ways. It’s not all about the amount of tax paid.

@Badbadbunny I agree with you re tax avoidance, I pay into ISAs, overpay my pension etc. That reduces my tax burden but it’s not illegal.

We can't just keep ignoring the extra pressure being put on working class people with the flooding of immigrants into the country.

Everything is becoming premium because of more demand. Housing, food and energy is absolutely astronomical. Take 10 million people out of housing for instance and housing may become available and affordable for working class British people.

The country needs to come together and start a national strike until rapid changes are immediately bought in to start fixing the country. If that also means an emergency general election to get rid of labour then it needs to happen

Nail on the head.