http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4523804.stm
Huge losses
The emerging details of this fraud, and its sheer scale, help to explain why the tax credit system has been losing so much money.
It was introduced in its present version in 2003 to pay the new working tax credits and child tax credits.
Ever since it started it has been widely criticised for being what the Public Accounts Committee recently called an administrative "nightmare".
They highlighted the fact that in its first year of operation (2003/04) £16bn was handed out to 5.7 million families. But 1.8 million of them were overpaid by £2.2bn.
Although this was partly due to administrative and computer problems, the National Audit Office claimed in October that fraud had contributed to £460m of that overpayment, along with mistakes by claimants.
Nearly a billion pounds of accumulated overpayment from the first two years of the current tax credit system will probably be written off as doubtful debt.
This highlights the general incompetence of this Labour government, it's army of civil servants and it's radical "ideas".
I you or I are late with our tax returns, make a small error or are suspected of telling porkies, we are branded cheats, hit with penalties and interest.
However, the loss of a few billion pounds through their ineptitude is nothing to worry about. Best not mention it eh?
Huge losses
The emerging details of this fraud, and its sheer scale, help to explain why the tax credit system has been losing so much money.
It was introduced in its present version in 2003 to pay the new working tax credits and child tax credits.
Ever since it started it has been widely criticised for being what the Public Accounts Committee recently called an administrative "nightmare".
They highlighted the fact that in its first year of operation (2003/04) £16bn was handed out to 5.7 million families. But 1.8 million of them were overpaid by £2.2bn.
Although this was partly due to administrative and computer problems, the National Audit Office claimed in October that fraud had contributed to £460m of that overpayment, along with mistakes by claimants.
Nearly a billion pounds of accumulated overpayment from the first two years of the current tax credit system will probably be written off as doubtful debt.
This highlights the general incompetence of this Labour government, it's army of civil servants and it's radical "ideas".
I you or I are late with our tax returns, make a small error or are suspected of telling porkies, we are branded cheats, hit with penalties and interest.
However, the loss of a few billion pounds through their ineptitude is nothing to worry about. Best not mention it eh?
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