What was claimed
Asylum seeker benefits cost the UK £60 million per year, equivalent to £2 per year per taxpayer.
Our verdict
False. The government spent approximately £4 billion on asylum support in 2024/25, equivalent to about £105 per taxpayer.
This comparison of asylum support, benefit fraud and tax avoidance costs is still wrong
A post circulating on Facebook claims:
“Asylum seeker benefits cost UK £60m/year, equivalent to £2/year per taxpayer
“Benefit Fraud/Error costs £3 BILLION/year, £100/year per taxpayer
“Tax Avoidance costs £90 BILLION/year, £3000/year per taxpayer
“Why are the Right-Wing only screaming about the first one?”
These figures are inaccurate—the figures for the amount spent on “asylum seeker benefits” and “benefit fraud/error” are too low, and the figure for “tax avoidance” appears to be too high.
The claims about the amount these things cost “per taxpayer” appear to assume there are 30 million taxpayers in the UK. This is too low—the latest government figures project approximately 39 million income taxpayers in 2025/26, an increase from 38 million in 2024/25 and 36.6 million in 2023/24. (It’s worth noting that estimates of the cost of large scale spending “per taxpayer” are illustrative as the cost of public spending doesn’t fall equally on all taxpayers. Around 10% of public spending also comes from non-tax sources).
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How much does the UK spend on asylum seeker support?
Asylum seekers aren’t entitled to mainstream benefits, but those who are destitute are entitled to be provided with accommodation and financial support by the government. We’ve written more about this here.
It’s not clear where the £60 million figure comes from—we’ve seen it circulating since at least 2020—but it’s too low when looking at the amount the UK spends each year on support for asylum seekers.
The Home Office’s annual report and accounts for 2024/25 show that spending on asylum support, resettlement and accommodation totalled £4 billion, down from £4.7 billion the previous financial year.
Based on the government’s projections for the number of income tax payers in 2024/25, this equates to approximately £105 per taxpayer, though as we’ve said public spending doesn’t quite work like that.
How much does benefit fraud and error cost?
The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that in 2024/25 a total of £9.5 billion was lost due to overpayments in benefits due to fraud and error.
£6.5 billion was overpaid in benefits due to fraud, and £2.9 billion due to error (these figures don’t sum to £9.5 billion due to rounding).
Approximately £1.1 billion of the amount overpaid was recovered, meaning the net loss due to overpayments was £8.4 billion—more than double the amount claimed in the post.
These figures are for Great Britain only. Based on the government’s projections for the number of income tax payers in Great Britain in 2024/25 this equates to approximately £226 per taxpayer.
What about tax avoidance?
HMRC estimates that in 2023/24 (the most recent year we have figures for) the amount of tax revenue lost due to tax avoidance was £0.7 billion.
Based on the government’s projections for the number of income tax payers in 2023/24 this equates to approximately £19 per taxpayer.
It estimates that the overall “tax gap” (the difference between the amount of tax collected by HMRC and the amount that theoretically should have been collected), including revenue lost due to avoidance, but also other reasons like tax evasion, criminal attacks, the hidden economy and error, was £46.8 billion.
Tax avoidance refers to legal non-payment or underpayment of tax which the government describes as “within the letter, but not the spirit, of the law”, while tax evasion refers to illegal attempts to not pay or underpay taxes.
HMRC estimates that in 2023/24 a net £6.4 billion was lost due to tax evasion. This means that tax avoidance and evasion combined cost the UK more than the amount spent on asylum support, but slightly less than the amount lost to benefit fraud and error.
We’ve fact checked claims that the amount lost to tax avoidance or evasion is much higher than this several times over the years. The £90 billion figure appears to be based on a 2019 estimate by the economist Richard Murphy, who claimed that the UK “tax gap” is in fact much higher than HMRC estimates.
More recently, in July 2025 Mr Murphy said he believed that the tax gap “could be as big as £80 billion, easily”.
We’ve written more about Mr Murphy’s claims and HMRC’s own tax gap estimates in a previous fact check.