[cmonstanley]

Originally Posted by wallop79

Having read about the tax credits side of it at work, the tax credit part will close loopholes for fraud (hopefully), instead of as it is now telling HMRC how much you are going to earn for the coming year, they are going to be liasing with your employer on a monthly basis, so if your wages alter each month (either up or down) then your tax credits for that month will compensate. Basically as it says below they want people to work instead of having a welfare based state, and in theory take more children out of poverty. JSA & IS pay the same amount of money so there wont be any real changes there I dont think. ESA will be all about as it is now to try & get people back to work, the old ethos of I cant do that, I used to work as ... doesn't work anymore, its not what you cant do anymore but what you can do. I dont know whats going to happen to DLA, or carers allowance that I will have to read up on. But housing benefit & I think also council tax benefit will also come under the heading of universal credits.

Principles for reform

1. We would propose to use a set of principles to guide reform. They could be to:

• ensure that people can see that the clear rewards from taking all types of work outweigh the risks;
• further incentivise and encourage households and families to move into work and to increase the amount of work they do, by improving the rewards from work at low earnings, and helping them keep more of their earnings as they work harder;
• increase fairness between different groups of benefit recipients and between recipients and the taxpayer;
• continue to support those most in need and reduce the numbers of workless households and children in poverty and ensure that interactions with other systems of support for basic needs are considered;
• promote responsibility and positive behaviour, doing more to reward saving, strengthening the family and, in tandem with improving incentives, reinforcing conditionality;
• automate processes and maximise self service, to reduce the scope for fraud, error and overpayments. This could include a responsive and immediate service that saves the taxpayer significant amounts of money and ensures compliance costs for employers, at worst, no worse than under the current system; and
• ensure that the benefits and Tax Credits system is affordable in the short and longer term.

all words how can they do self service wwithout fraud this means no civil servants just do it online which is the same old tory way say one thing and do the opposite