UK Government To Use PayPal For Identity Assurance

judgecorp writes "A UK government contract has confirmed earlier reports that British citizens will have the option to use PayPal to accredit themselves for public services such as the new Universal Credit benefit system. Using PayPal might be a public relations goof, as PayPal's parent eBay is notoriously clever at avoiding UK taxes, recently paying only £1.2 million on profit of £789 million (around 0.15 percent)."

Comments

All banks do it.

[nospam007]

It's not their fault, it's the Parliament making crappy laws, albeit most of them are lawyers, they either suck or are bought.
Paypal is a bank and like all banks they avoid paying taxes like the pest.

"Barclays Bank told by Treasury to pay £500m avoided tax"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17181213

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/10/18/banks-to-avoid-19bn-tax-bill-despite-bailout/
http://goodbanking.org.uk/archives/684

More interesting than tax rate

[h4rr4r]

Far more interesting than their effective tax rate would be how much of that money was stolen from their users?

These folks love to freeze accounts and sieze money for any reason they can find. Paypal should be regulated as a bank.

Re:More interesting than tax rate

[cusco]

And even more amusing is the thought of how many times PayPal has been hacked and customer data stolen over the years. And they're going to use PayPal as accreditation?

WTF?

[future assassin]

And when paypal puts your account on hold or someone deletes it then what?

Trust

[Wowsers]

Why would anyone trust a company that pretends to be a bank, but is not regulated like a bank, and so can disappear your money in an instant and leave you whistling in the wind for YOUR money? Did the government somehow find if difficult to find a company more trusted?