Rich law, poor law : differential response to tax and supplementary benefit fraud

• Main Author: Cook, Dee M.
• Published: Keele University 1988
• Subjects: 301; K Law (General)
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.235753

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 supplementary benefit fraud can neither be explained by reference to qualitative differences in 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.