Why is UK soft on benefit scroungers?

Because its better to get 50% of something than 100% of nothing.

Additionally many people aren't entirely comfortable with the level to which those who earn a decent income are expected to pay for everyone else.

Did you know that 70% of benefits go on pensions, 29% go on disability, health, child care etc, and only 1% is abused. Though that 1% does equal about one billion pounds. Then again, the bankers have managed to avoid paying over 70 billion pounds in taxes. Why is the UK so soft on tax avoiders?

"Because its better to get 50% of something than 100% of nothing." What's that referring to?

And maybe people should be more compassionate? It's just like paying taxes towards education - would people begrudge that too?

Well in that case up to 30% of benefits are abused in my eyes.

It's just that the 'abuse' has been placed in to 'law', that sludgy contract (that we don't even sign but have to agree to as a consequence of merely being born here) that we sometimes mistake ourselves (because it serves us to) as thinking as being an objectively moral thing, as being acceptable.

Disability - some are born disabled, some become clearly disabled and some are 'signed off' as disabled when they should really be signed off as 'more or less chose to become unemployed either because they permanently don't try to fit in in a workplace, don't have enough skills to ever not feel persecuted for the merest bit of feedback, don't have enough willpower sought out by them or brought out of them to make anything of themselves or have chosen to put their health in jeapordy by their own choices in life'.

Health - children sometimes have no choice over their health. Their parents might only feed them high fat foods for instance or might smoke in the home near to them.
But adults? Unless they live near a toxic plant, what is the reason to give them benefits for health? They are just part of the 'chose to become unemployed' as above.

Child care benefit given to parents. Is this a joke? You had sex, you gave birth. Nothing to do with the state. Oh you did it to bequeath the nation with some great mind did you? Why didn't you try to become that great mind yourself instead of asking for benefit for someone who you chose to bring in to the world? It's like being a begger in the street who sits down, draws a painting and then holds his hand out looking for money. Not so you can HAVE the painting,. Just because he made the painting 'Look how beautiful it is'. If it sounds slightly pitiful then that is exactly what anyone who claims child benefit essentially does.

However- what I firmly, absolutely, believe is that there should be child care benefit in the form of tokens for CHILDREN that the child chooses, at school and in consultation with adults, what to spend those tokens on. They had no choice in coming in to the world. They had no choice over who their parents are, where they live or what their early experiences of the world will be like.

The tokens would be a set amount for each child but that they could divide up according to their own wishes.

For instance, they could spend a third on clothes, a third on UK educational outings and a third on decorating their bedroom.

Or, instead, they could spend a quarter on UK educational outings, half on foreign travel and a quarter on electronic equipment. (TVs and videogames are educational, leisure and artistic tools).

As they are tokens, it would never be possible for either the child or adults to just 'fritter' it away on alcohol, fast food etc. Even if those things are not necessarily bad in moderation they are not something that it is a school's responsibility to provide.
Certainly the possibility that child benefit, under our current system, could be used by a parent to buy drugs for themselves, thus making them a less in control parent, is just awful to think of, no matter how badly that parent feels, through their limited perspective, life has treated them.

If you collect every penny of tax due, but drive large amounts of business abroad do you really act for the better?

Many evidently do begrudge paying taxes towards education, hence the support for tuition fees, reduction of EMA, etc.

...

You really think that if we made Google, Amazon, Starbucks, pay their fair share of taxes that they would up sticks and leave? Pull the other one.

Fraud accounts for 0.7% of benefits spend, whilst DWP error costs 0.9%, and 6% of entitled benefits go unclaimed.

In absolute figures, we're talking £1.2bn lost in benefit fraud, but total cost of fraud in the economy is £73bn. £73bn is before you even consider tax avoidance - the legal practices employed by the large corporations in avoiding being liable for tax, such as Starbucks' clever method of buying coffee via Switzerland despite such coffee never touching the ground there. It's not that they're disgruntled at having a high tax rate; Amazon and Starbucks pay literally 0% corporation tax, and Google paid a measly £6m the other year.

By all means, all fraud is bad, and we should tackle fraud in the benefits system, but frankly if I was given a pot of money by the government to spend on recovering owed revenue, I'd be going going after the activity that is costing a hundred times that of benefit fraud. The complaint isn't against going after benefit cheats; it's against going after benefit cheats, portraying it as the biggest scandal to touch the country, and barely scratching the service of FTSE100 corporations who are paying virtually nothing.

Source?

Where fraud clearly exists I'm all for pursuing those responsible. Tax is however vastly more complex, especially where multiple tax systems start to come into play. Why not aim for the Manx or Irish approach and drop taxes so people pay here rather than there?

Whilst the system has holes that allow tax to be avoided companies have a duty to their shareholders to exploit them, and anyone with a private pension plan will have an interest in that which for most will outweigh what they might expect to receive in state benefits.

Google and costa may not leave, but how many firms 'tax dodging' with far more mobile operations would? A small number of relatively immobile companies shouldn't be hammered for tax if there is a danger that far more will quietly leave as a result.

Because they wouldn't be paying here. Starbucks is here, they're registering a loss despite clearly profiting from their recent UK expansions; dropping the tax would not make them pay a single penny more; it would simply remove the liability for them to pay it.

I agree, it is the responsibility of a tax adviser within a company to minimise tax expenditure for example. I'm not saying blame the companies; I'm saying we should tighten up our tax legislation so that they're not allowed to do such ridiculous things. It's the fault of the law.

There is nothing to suggest that they will leave though; that's my point. The sorts of companies we're talking about here with profits in the tens of billions aren't going to leave just because they're running out of places to avoid tax.

Google pay a pile of tax in ireland because that is where they register their profits, the profits made here fill the irish exchequer. Drop the tax rate to become competitive and collect the money here.

You can't target the companies with profits in the tens of billions and avoid hitting the smaller more mobile ones who may well exist in large enough numbers to be more important.