To read the Sun, Mail and Mirror, you might think that our financial problems are due to poor people and immigrants living on benefits.
In reality, benefit cheats account for very little – the big drain on government income is due to very rich people not paying their fair share of tax.
The government and the right-wing press and media run stories against poor people (whether they be on benefits or immigrants or whatever) to divert attention from their own relative affluence (72% of the current crop of MPs are millionaires!). They want you to vote to allow them to continue to accumulate wealth at your expense and at the expense of the poorest in Britain.
This explains why the government has more officers working away to identify “benefit fraud” than to identify tax dodgers. The benefits cheats routinely face the threat of prosecution and imprisonment whilst, in contrast, when HMRC do discover £ multi-million tax evasion, their policy is not to prosecute but to politely ask for their money retrospectively.
This encourages would-be tax dodgers to try their luck as they’re in a classic “can’t lose” situation. Tax evasion has become yet another way of discriminating against the poor and in favour of the already-rich.
Dr John Cox blogs 