Also it keeps wages down if someone can pay cash in hand they don't have to pay NMW so everyone except the employer is being exploited !

I'm another anti, I know everyone always wants more than they get but that £2000 a year is £2000 that should be deducted from their benefits and £2000 less that we should be paying them. I do feel people should be enabled and encouraged back into work and more could be done to ease the transistion but working for cash and still claiming full benefits is theft from the taxpayer pure and simple. I don't think the amount matters either whether it be £2000 or £20.

I can not find anyone to help me unless I pay them on the black, ie cash in hand, but that is illegal. They do not have to declare it but I do - and I have to pay their National Insurance dues, their Health Fund dues, and pay them for holidays and sick pay - everything.

And of course no-one wants to work legally because they get more by working on the black.

What happens if I - not they - am found employing someone on the black?

I get prosecuted. They just take the money, laugh, and run.

To be fair you are in a different situation and country so much of what has been said probably won't apply unless you have the same benefit system and NMW that is being driven down, I am told many countries around the world operate in very different ways to us here in the UK so am making some assumptions about it of course.

I don't know of any country in the world where the government condones people recieving benefits & being allowed to do undeclared paid work"off the books"& also if the person employing them is complicit then they too are liable for prosecution.

Being an ex fraud investigator for the then DSS(Now Job Centre +)I prepared many such cases claimant & employer for proscecution.

Sorry why should I as a tax pslayer support benefit claimants who are defrauding the scheme & committing criminal acts.

Julie - it is illegal to employ anyone "on the black". They get away with it but the person paying them gets done.

Let me explain - if I legally employ a cleaner or a carer through an agency, the agency pays all National Insurance and Health Fund fees. I pay the full amount but the person employed legally gets the minimum wage.

So they do not want that therefore they want to work on the black.

In such a case I pay them the same amount that I have to pay the agency, and they get it all cash in hand. Far more than the agency would pay them if they were employed legally.

And if it is found out they get a slap on the wrist and I get charged with employing someone illegally.

Edited to add that I would also lose the disability allowance that I get to pay for a cleaner or carer.

That's why I said it's a different country, here people tend to work for less than the NMW they are being exploited if they registered with agencies they would get at least NMW. What stops them registering and declaring income is daft system where benefit is so hard to get back into after a short period of employment. Getting behind with rent etc because you have to put in a fresh claim stopped me taking many jobs when my husband was ill. If it could have been made easier to take temporary work and go back onto benefit after we could have claimed far less but I couldn't take a chance of losing our home if I did a legal short term job.

Julie if it is me you are referring to - I am officially UK resident - registered to pay tax and NI in the UK, not Cyprus (well my employers pay NI as I am a pensioner who opted to carry on working I no longer have to make NI contribs but still pay tax) - it's a choice you make when you move abroad - which country to be registered for tax in.

I do of course pay a lot more than I would if I swapped and opted to be registered here for one thing, tax on savings income is around 30% here and because of the 'reciprocal arrangements for EU countries' I have to pay it if I earn interest on money in the bank (when it was lower here than in the UK I had to pay it in BOTH countries!)

In Cyprus you don't pay any income tax at all until you earn over about €19,000 (in the UK it's some ridiculously low sum around £5K before you pay tax - that's another bugbear of mine that they should raise the bar so that people who work and earn don't have to claim benefits too as their after tax take home still leaves them entitled to benefits.

But minimum wage here is Cyprus is just about €4 and not all jobs qualify for that (but see above no income tax payable until over €19K reached) - cleaners and carers etc don't get NMW. As for 'unemployment benefit' - you have to have paid into the social insurance fund for a long time to be entitled and then wait SIX MONTHS or even longer before you get anything and if there's 'no money in the pot' you can be made to wait even longer than that. It does of course result in most low paid workers finding another job whatever it is as they cannot afford to survive that long with NO money coming in. Cyprus is not a 'cheap country' like Spain and others are as anyone who has holidayed here will know. What is cheaper here is property, rents, council taxes, water (we have no gas and electricity is higher even than in UK - most expensive in the EU).

Average wages here for unskilled workers is around 850 a month. They don't get overtime rates nor extra for working weekends, high days or holidays. Seasonal workers have to work 7 months to be entitled to unemployment for the other 5 months but they have to wait so long to get it they usually either leave or find other work instead. We have a bloated public sector workforce who are underworked and overpaid and lots of semi govt organisations too such as the Electricity Authority and the major Phone company, transport, post offices, banks, teaching, police etc. Those are the 'gold dust' jobs and no one who isn't Cypriot ever gets one.

Situation is that Eastern European workers coming in get the jobs because they will work for less than 800 a month - they say it's good money to them because in, say, Romania, they'd be earning just 300 a month for same work!

We have no National Health Service. The poorest and the elderly are treated at low cost in govt hospitals but not no cost. But private health costs are far less than in the UK. There are no free state nursery schools. It costs around 300 a month minimum for a part time nursery place for a working mum. All 'good' schools are private and fee paying.

If the UK didn't have a half decent NMW the situation would no doubt be just the same there. And the proof of that is in these employers who will take on benefit recipients and pay them cash in hand to keep their costs low.

It's a complicated subject really. Yes if benefits are hard to come by it WILL force more people into work and that is proven. But a caring society should make provision for the weak and the poorest members. Then if that provision is quite good, you will of course get those who abuse it. Which is why I said above I cannot see it ever changing.

You can't have very low taxation and lots of state provision such as benefits, health care, and all that. In the UK workers pay a good whack of their earnings in NI and Tax and I think they are entitled to feel aggrieved by anyone who 'steals' from the pot they pay into.

There always seems to be talk in the UK of govts cutting back on all sorts of benefits and provisions. Well to me it stands to reason that you cannot have an ever diminishing pot of money coming in and an ever increasing mountain of money going out in benefits.

I don't blame foreign workers for taking jobs at below NMW I blame the employers who take them on. In the same way if there were not employers willing to pay cash in hand to part timers on benefits - the subject of this thread would not be up for discussion.

Now what you said there is what I think is part of the problem - or the 'benefits culture'. To even be thinking of 'getting back onto benefits' when there is a job on offer.

Would be better if it were thinking that hopefully the job will last and if it doesn't your chances of getting another one are higher if you are already working than if you've been unemployed for a long time.

I am happy to think the money I pay into the UK pot goes to health care, education, pensions, child benefit, free bus travel, and even infrastructure. But not happy to think about it going to people who are on benefits and could work but won't just in case they can't quickly 'get back onto benefits'. Or don't see the wage as being attractive enough to give up the benefits - or as being discussed here are better off on benefits and earning a 'bit on the side' than they would be working for all their money.

A system where being on benefits seems more attractive than being in paid work is fundamentally wrong IMHO.

Something will have to give eventually. You cannot have a diminishing number of people supporting a growing number of dependents.

No I was responding to Malka. Sorry