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This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights and duplication or sale of all or part is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for research, private study, criticism/review or educational purposes. Electronic or print copies are for your own personal, non- commercial use and shall not be passed to any other individual. No quotation may be published without proper acknowledgement. For any other use, or to quote extensively from the work, permission must be obtained from the copyright holder/s. RICH LAW, POOR LAY: DIFFERENTIAL RESPONSE TO TAX AND SUPPLEXENTARY BENEFIT FRAUD D. X. COOK Ph. D. 1988 CONTEXTS PAGE (vii) ACKBOVLEDGEXENTS (Viii) ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF TABLES (Viii) (ix) ABSTRACT OF THESIS INTRODUCTION 1 The Problem 1 1 Phase 1- Locating the object of research Phase 2- Deciding what to do 2 Phase 3- Deciding on the theoretical analysis to be undertaken 3 Phase 4- The empirical work 9 Structure of the thesis 20 Thesis 21 CHAPTER 1 A SUMMARY OF LITERATURE RELATING TO TAXATION A_ADWELFARE BENEFITS (1) OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS 29 Tax a) 31 b) Supplementary benefits 34 (2) ECONOMICS LITERATURE 38 a) Measuring the black economy 38 43 b) The incentives argument (i)Tax (ii) Supplementary benefits 46 c) The redistribution of income: tax and benefits 54 d) Economics arguments on 'Growth' and 'Social Justice' 57 (i) (3) SOCIAL POLICY ISSUES 61 1) The historical development of the welfare state 63 73 2) Theories of penality 81 3) The ideology of the New Right (4) LEGAL ISSUES 91 a) Tax avoidance, tax evasion and the law 92 b) Supplementary benefit fraud and the law 100 (5) SOCIOLOGICAL LITERATURE 103 a) Social and economic inequality 104 b) Organizational sociology 108 c) Criminological literature 112 1)White-collar crime 113 2)The process of criminalization and the formation of 116 societal responses to deviance 3)New Criminology 119 d) The the sociology of mass media 121 e) Social psychology 122 (6) CA MPAIGNING LITERATURE 127 a) Trades unions 127 128 b) The 'Anti-Poverty' lobby c) The 'Anti-Taxation' lobby 130 CHAPTER 1- SUXXARY 132 CHAPTER2 139 (a) Differential Historj (1) Taxation 140 (ii) Welfare 146 (ii) (b) Legal and Administrative Preconditions 155 (i) Taxation 155 (ii) Supplementary benefits 158 (c) Differential Opportunity Structures 163 CHAPTER 2- SUXXARY 167 CHAPTER 3 172 DEFINING THE PROBLEM[; IM COXXONSENSEAID Il THEORY Introduction 172 (a) Defining the problem in commonsense 173 (i) Official information 174 (ii)Competing perspectives on the problem 179 180 Advocates of 'effort' 184 Advocates of 'social justice' (iii)Media processes and products 187 (b) Defining the problem in theory 194 The State 195 Ideology 197 Imagery 198 Social policy 199 CHAPTER 3- SW(XARY 200 CHAPTER 4 203 THE FRAUDSTERS TECHS UES AND IF CAT - _JUST IONS Introduction 203 (1) TAX FRAUDSTERS (a)Techniques, - 204 (i)The building trade 206 (iii) (ii)The 'one man band' and small commercial traders 209 (iii)Auction and street market traders 211 (iv) Hotel and Catering Trade 213 (v)Highly paid employees, Directors and the Professionals 216 Summary of tax fraud techni. Ue 221 TAX FRAUDSTERS - (b) Justifications 225 1) 'An intolerable inquisition' 226 2) Taxation as a stifling of incentives 238 3) 'Everyone does it' 244 Summary of the justifications offe: "ed for tax fraud. 249 (2) SUPPLEMENTARY BENEFIT FRAUDSTERS - (a)Techniques 251 1) Working and claiming 254 2) Liable relative fraud: fictitious desertion and cohabitation 262 3) Itinerant fraud 270 4) Instrument of payment fraud 273 5) Other fiddles 274 Summar y of supplementary benefit fraud techniques 278 SUPPLEMENTARY BENEFIT FRAUDSTERS - (b)Justifications 280 1) 'Fiddling for necessities' 281 2) The nexus of mistrust and degradation 287 i 3) Swings and roundabouts 293 4) 'Everyone does it, 295 Summar the justifications y of offered for supplementary benefit fraud 296 CHAPTER 4- SUXXARY 298 (iv) CHAPTER 5 301 (1) TAX INVESTIGATIONS 302 (a) Policy 302 (b) Regu1atian: - 308 ORGANIZATION 308 TECHNIQUES 312 Routine Investigation and Compliance work 313 a) Making connections 313 b) Targetting - occupations and locations 318 Specialist Investigations. 321 Smeary. 325 (2) SUPPLEMENTARY BENEFIT INVESTIGATIONS 327 (a) Policy 327 (b) Regulation. 337 ORGANIZATION 338 TECHNIQUES Targetting: types - a) occupations and claimant 344 b) Anonymous tip-offs 353 Fraud drives 'knocker c) and squads' 356 d) 'Super Special Claims Control Units. snoopers': 360 Summary 366 (3) DIFFERENTIAL RESPONSE - PENALTIES AID PROSECUTION 369 (a) POLICY 370 Penalty and prosecution - Tax 370 Penalty and prosecution - Supplementary benefit 375 (b) PRACTICE 379 1) Legal Issues 380 (v1 2) Advice and representation 383 3) Sentencing offenders 387 4) The 'Ability to Pay': the appropriateness of punishments 397 CHAPTER 5- SUKXARY 400 CHAPTER6 405 DIFFEREITIAi RESPONSE TO TAX AID SUPPLEMENTARY BELEFIT FRAUD - SU XARY AND CONCLUSIONS 406 1) The 'deserving' and the 'undeserving' poor 408 2) Penality, welfare and taxation 1109 3) The incentives debate 411 4) The 'Robin Hood' myth 411 5) Differential attribution of motives for tax and benefit fraud 412 6) Freedom and social justice Analysis of discourses on taxation and welfare: 415 The 1988 Budget and Social Security Reforms APPENDICES 1) Biographies of interviewees 420 2) Inland Revenue Prosecutions 422 3) D. H.S. S. prosecutions for supplementary benefit fraud 423 4) Information from a study of 206 supplementary benefit prosecutions in one Midlands Magistrates' Court 423 5) Relevant statutes and cases 425 Bibliography 426 Relevant correspondence 439 (vi) I am grateful to the Economic and Social research Council for the Competition Award funded the first his (1984/5). which year of . research I should also like to thank all the people who made this study possible, but who must remain anonymous: D. H.S. S. and Inland Revenue staff, Trades Union officials from the C. P. S. A. and I. R. S. F., and all the supplementary benefit claimants and taxpayers who allowed themselves to be interviewed. Thanks too to the friends (particularly Jane 'Oearce) whose support and practical assistance over the last four years has been much appreciated. But special thanks to my husband Marston and son Haydn whose practical help, love and sense of humour kept me going. Finally, I should like to thank my supervisor, Dr Pat Carlen for her invaluable advice (which enabled me to see the wood for the trees and, so, to complete the thesis), and for her encouragement over the last seven years. (vii) PAGE Table 1: 1 Thes; s and Antithesis of the New Right 81 Table 2: 1 Cant-adictions in the ideological and material 171 circumstances in which tax and benefit frauds are committed. Table 3: Contradictory principles underlying taxation and welfare . 202 Table 4: 1 Supplementary benefit cases considered for prosecution 252 in 1984/5 in England, Scotland and Wales. Table 4: 2 Justifications for tax and supplementary benefit fraud, 300 and underlying economic and ideological conditions. Table 5: 1 Diag: ammatic representation of Revenue 309 investigation routes Table 5: 2 (Revenue) Investigation yields 311 Table 5: 3 Cost-yield ratios of investigation work (y/eýMarch 1985) 312 Table 5: 4 Diagrammatic representation of the organization of fraud investigations supplementary benefit (1980 - 1986) 339 Table 5: 5 Rationales for tax investigations 400 Table 5: 6 Rationales for supplementary benefit investigations 401 Table 5: 7 Differential ideological preconditions for 404 enforcement policy Table 6: 1 Rationales for the 1988 Budget and Social Security Reforms. 412 The following abbreviations will be used throughout the thesis: O. V. S. denotes an official verbal source of information which, for reasons of confidentiality cannot be named. O. V. S. denotes an official written (unpublished) source which cannot, for reasons of confidentiality, be attributed. (Viii) People who (in relation to their personal taxation) defraud the Inland Revenue and people who (in relation to their supplementary benefit payments) defraud the Department of Health and Social Security are similarly engaged in economic crimes which result in loss to the public purse. These crimes provoke differential political, official, judicial and public responses. Differential response to tax and suplementary benefit in fraud can neither be explained by reference to qualitative differences the commission of the illegal acts involved, nor by the crude suggestion that differential regulation of tax and benefit fraud is nothing more than a conspiracy of the rich against the poor. Rather, such differential response derives from the different combinations of legal, economic, social and ideological histories of these two forms of fraud. In this thesis, analysis of these differential and combinatory histories centres on the material conditions and ideological discourses within which differential response is made possible. In addition the vocabularies of motive offered for both the commission and regulation of tax and supplementary benefit fraud are analysed. These analyses together reveal that differential and shifting material and ideological conditions create different opportunities and justifications for both tax and supplementary benefit fraud. At the same time they also enable policy makers continually to change the modes of regulation of both types of crime. The bulk of the thesis is aimed at demonstrating how and why knowledges about taxation and welfare are not immutable but are forever open to deconstruction and challenge. (ix) The slogan that there is 'one law for the rich and another for the poor' is often used to describe, in commonsense terms, the differential response to those who 'fiddle' taxes and those who 'fiddle' welfare benefits. But such assertions are not explanations. The analysis that follows therefore aims to go beyond assertion - to describe how and explain why tax and supplementary benefit fraud receive such totally different social responses. Initially, the first objective of the research was to confirm the existence of differential response to tax and supplementary benefit fraud at an empirical level.
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