UK: How 150,000 Working Immigrants Pay Just £1 a Week Tax AND Get Benefits for Their Families

Daily Mail

May 1, 2014

Hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans are making little or no contribution to the Exchequer despite working full-time, a report claims today.

The UK’s generous tax credits system means 150,000 migrants without partners or children, who earn the minimum wage, pay just £1-a-week net tax, including National Insurance.

If they have a non-working partner and children, it costs the taxpayer money to support them, according to Migration Watch.

A singe earner couple with two children receives nearly £90 a week more in benefits than they pay in tax.

With two children, the cost rises to £295. For three children it is £400, four children £500 and five children £600 per week.

The think-tank’s analysis said a couple where both partners work on minimum wage would pay in a total £28 net. But if they have two children they could receive a net benefit of £380 a week.

The group added that the calculations do not include indirect taxes such as VAT nor do they include health, education and social services.

There are also major costs in later life, for pensions and health, to which the low-paid will make no significant contribution. These could amount to £120,000 for a single pensioner and £160,000 for a couple.

According to official figures, around 25 per cent of Poles and other Eastern Europeans are earning the minimum wage or less.

Only 4.5 per cent pay the higher 40p rate of tax, compared to 15 per cent of the UK population as a whole.

The tax credit system, largely engineered by Gordon Brown, tops up the wages of the lower paid.

It benefits British workers in the exact same way as people from overseas.

But Migration Watch said that the figures blew a hole in claims that mass migration is good for the economy because of the taxes paid by foreign workers.

Chairman Sir Andrew Green said the taxpayer was ‘subsidising’ the wages of many low paid migrants from the ex-Eastern Bloc, who have had unrestricted access to the UK’s jobs market since 2004.

He added: ‘No wonder then that employers are in favour of them and that so many people find the UK such an attractive destination.

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