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You'd think a nurse's pension would be counted as a pension, not as "welfare".

But in new tax summaries that will be sent out to 24 million homes by George Osborne, he has done a tricksy re-definition of the word "welfare" that makes the benefits bill look a lot bigger than it actually is.

The new tax summaries are misleading

George Osborne has promised to mail a letter out to tax payers every year, telling them just what he's doing with their money.

These new "tax summaries" will illustrate just how much of each pound you pay in tax goes to costs like defence, healthcare and pensions.

The government say it's more transparent. An analysis from Ampp3d suggests it's misleading the public about how much we spend on welfare.

Here's the trick

364 days of the year, the Government counts pensions as part of the welfare bill. But in this letter - they've split them apart.

They say it's because they want to make it clearer.

But the effect is to minimise the pension spend and to maximise what looks like the benefits bill under the "welfare" heading.

Ampp3d has found that they've mislead the public by counting public sector pensions under welfare instead of under pensions.

We believe they've done this to make the welfare budget look bigger than it actually is.

It gives the impression that we spend more on benefits such as JSA and housing support.

Welfare is never normally defined this way

That means nurses, teachers and fire-fighters' pensions are being counted as "benefits" by being put in the welfare bill rather than the "state pensions" bill.

From the letter it looks like 12p of every pound you pay is going to "pensions"

The tax summary examples show that somebody earning £30,000 a year would spend 24.5% of their taxes on the "welfare" budget and a further 12% on pensions.

Actually a lot more than 12% is going to pensions

And less than 24% is going to working-age benefits.

But this welfare is different - the one employed by the Government in the new tax summaries (see table below) includes an extra category: "social protection". That's not normally included in the budget of the Department for Work and Pensions.

The Treasury told us this ‘Social protection’ category also covers other retirement support such as public service pensions, as well as winter fuel payments.

The Government's response: the change makes tax "easier to understand"

This is the trick the Government used: they stretched the definition of welfare.

The Treasury told us social protection was included under welfare "to make the summary easier to understand".

Would you agree with them?

[With thanks to Declan Gaffney for the additional analysis]