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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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A cunning plan...
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Merrick
Merrick
2148 posts

Re: A cunning plan...
Jul 13, 2010, 11:18
pooley wrote:
I agree with some of that article, as one sided and loaded as it is!! Something I do take issue with is the final paragraph. I may have misread it (happens) but are you saying that benefit fraud, whilst wrong, invoke because many people claiming are very very poor, where as tax fraud is somehow worse as these people already have cash??


The final paragraph doesn't cover that point at all; it is written in an ironic voice to explain why a government of the rich would target the poor, that they believe that money is equal to virtue and so the rich should be allowed to retain any wealth that comes through their hands, whereas the poor have in some way failed by not being rich.

But earlier in the article, yes, I'm saying that tax evasion is worse.

I'm sure there'll be individual cases of benefit fraud that's based on unwarranted greed, and the occasional tax evasion that keeps a family from collapsing, but as a broad principle tax evasion is a worse crime because it is based on greed whereas - as the Joseph Rowntree report cited shows - benefit fraud is largely about keeping someone's head above water.

And this is before we get into the scale of cost to the exchequer, with tax evasion costing us 15 times as much.

pooley wrote:
Isn't a crime a crime?


No. I suspect that nobody - not even you - actually believe that.

We can all imagine circumstances where it is not immoral to break a law. And even within the bounds of what's criminal, there is a scale of crime, hence sentences being greater for some crimes than others.

Furthermore, even within the breaking of the same law there are different motivations and different mitigating factors for that same crime, hence different sentences.
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