The TaxPayers' Alliance - Burning our Money

Tax Credits System Still Fraught with Errors

Today it has been announced that the amount of overpayment in the tax credits system has fallen. Reuters reports that the total has fallen by £100 million to a total of £1.7 billion this year. This is still a huge amount. A mistake is still made in almost half of tax credit payments. These mistakes mean families facing ruin thanks to overpayments being claimed back after having been spent and the British taxpayer funding criminal gangs that take advantage of the system’s flaws

With these huge costs to ongoing mistakes focussing attention on the problem some improvement was to be expected. What is remarkable is how slowly things are getting better. At this rate it will take 27 years, assuming that the same rate of improvement can be maintained, to create an error free system. This implies that it will take over a decade even to halve the number of errors.

We’ve already wasted £1.9 billion of taxpayers’ money in written off overpayments. Improvement at this pace just isn’t good enough.

The Town Hall Rich List

This report used the Freedom of Information Act to discover a startling number of local government employees being paid over £100,000 per year.  Many local government salaries are rising rapidly while council tax payers face higher bills.

Download Town Hall Rich List (PDF)

Public Sector Rich List

Public sector employees getting rich thanks to government generosity with your money!

Download Public Sector Rich List (PDF)

The Bumper Book of Government Waste

Welcome to the world of waste. You are about to enter a twilight zone of crazy spending, political correctness, utter incompetence, and fantastic jollies, all funded by the British taxpayer.

In this book, the authors have highlighted a myriad of examples of Government waste and useless spending, taken from thousands of examples held on file. The figures have been compiled from independent reports, media coverage and official statistics. Added together, they come to £81 billion of waste.

- In 1997, the Government plundered £2 billion per week from its people. In 2004-05, the figure was £4.8 billion.
- The Arts Council spent £77,000 sending a team of artists to the North Pole to make a snowman.
- Quangos cost over £22 billion per year.
- Local government pension schemes are in deficit to the tune of £27 billion. The taxpayer will fund the difference.
- 459 books were withdrawn from the EU's Luxembourg library last year. The cost to taxpayers was €2,138 per book.
- Ken Livingstone's office now costs £13.9 million to run. His staff includes 58 media and marketing personnel!
- Between 2000 and 2005, one in every two new jobs created was in the public sector, many of them administrative.
- Nottinghamshire tourism bosses spent £120,000 of taxpayers' money rebranding the county with a big 'N'.
- Each European member of Parliament (MEP) costs €2.4 million per year in salary, expenses, perks and administration.
- In 2005, 20 out of 24 government departments overspent their budgets. The total overspend was £7.1 billion.

These are just a few of the alarming facts and figures revealed in The Bumper Book of Government Waste. If you wasted your family's money on this scale, you would probably be locked up. Why should the Government get away with it?

The Bumper Book of Government Waste can be bought from the Publishers Website.

Whitehall pensions

This report lists details of 100 civil servants with pension pots of over £500,000.

Download Whitehall pensions (PDF)

The Political Payroll

The taxpayer funds an increasingly large army of government political appointees.  This report investigates some of the salaries we're paying.

Download The Political Payroll (PDF)

The Case Against Taxpayer Funded Parties

The case against political parties being bailed out by the taxpayer.

Download The Case Against Taxpayer Funded Parties (PDF)

Life is easier in the public sector

This report shows how working life is easier in the public sector than the private sector - more pay, fewer hours, more days off sick and better pensions.

Download Life is easier in the public sector (PDF)

Councillors' allowances

Councillors' allowances up again, and the best place to be a councillor.

Download Councillors' allowances (PDF)

Annual non-job report 2006

The most pointless public sector jobs in 2006, and how much they cost the taxpayer.

Download Non-job 2006 (PDF)

Today Programme balance

This note presents the results of 4 days of analysis of the bigger government/smaller government balance on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4, and finds that the "more government" messages dominate the "less government" messages.

Download Today Programme balance (PDF)