Should Payroll Fraud Be Illegal

There is no documentation of any payroll processes or procedures. The absence of documented procedures can cause confusion, inefficiencies, and may result in failure to meet deadlines not only within the payroll department but also for other area of the organizations that require information from the payroll department.

Depending on the severity of the fraud, the appropriate response can be different from firm to firm. A good way to detect fraud would be to listen to information provided by a disgruntled employee. This holds true unless the employee was disgruntled before the fraud occurred. The information will probably be false and misleading because the employee has held animosity for a while. Regardless, you should take the information seriously when it is first presented to you.

Incidents of corruption sometimes occur in the Canadian tax administration but are not considered a concern by surveyed companies (Business Corruption in Canada, 2016).

Throughout most sources, though, it is clear to see that employer fraud is the most prevalent and costly type of fraud. Employer fraud includes a number of schemes used by employers to reduce the number of workers' compensation insurance premiums by underreporting payroll, misclassifying employees' occupations and misrepresenting their claims experience. According to the National Council on Compensation, the most common frauds include:

An employer can prevent fraud in this situation by informing the employees that they do audit the till at the end of the shift and will find out if there is something wrong going on.

Employee embezzlement is the most common type of occupational fraud, and can be either direct or indirect. Direct fraud occurs when the employee steals company assets such as cash, or inventory. Indirect fraud occurs in instances where employees take bribes or kickbacks from vendors, customers, or others to provide allowances such as lower sales prices,

Another source of a great amount of fraud is the fact that a lot of businesses are careless when they're hiring new employees because they do not do conduct adequate background checks during the hiring process. They also have lack an adequate network and do not have a reliable computer security system in place so that also plays a big factor in to why their business is victim to fraud and cybercrime.

Consideration for economic context is essential for work and learning. Companies, such as public, not for profit, privately operated/owned etc., have the ability to move unaccounted for resources across borders, attain cheap labour by outsourcing and create off-shore accounts to avoid taxes all of which impact work and learning. The Canadian economy is one derived of many variables. Employers creating workplaces by outsourcing their labour, moving resources that are unaccounted for or by creating accounts to avoid taxes are in business to have the lowest expenses and the most profit. These employers are prepared to do what it takes at whatever cost. The community in which I live consisted of several factories. These factories operated for many years employing many people in this community. Over the last 15 years most of these factories shut down and relocated to various other countries, obtaining cheap labour and new ways of distribution, leaving

According to Walsh (2000) one of the major reasons for employee theft is low morale at the workplace. Second a lack of control over inventory. Sometimes young employees are subjectivity to peer press to be part of the group can encourage theft. The employee feels that the business or company has wronged or mistreated them in some way. This may be why employees feel underpaid and under-appreciate for their “hard” work done. Like any crime, there must be motive, method and opportunity. It is easy to steal because the employer does not have preventive measures to stop them. Preventive measures are crucial to reducing the risk of employee theft. If preventive measures are not existent then the opportunity to steal is very high. Employers should limit the opportunities to steal. Employers should open their own mail, segregate duties, and particularly bookkeeping functions. Also, employers should not have the check writer balance the checkbook and do not use cash. Younger employees do not think prudently, and tend to be impulsive (Walsh 2000). This is also a major reason why businesses suffer from low production and profit loss.

1. There’s a potential risk of delegating one-person manipulating the recording and authorizing of the payroll accounts.

Combating fraud in the private sector is a difficult task. Trying to combat fraud in the public sector is daunting. In 1999 15.7% of the American workforce were employed by a government entity (federal, state, and local).[1] Mirroring society, government will have its share of perpetrators. The difference from the private sector is in the scope of the fraud committed, the loss of the public trust, the blaring headlines from news media, and difficulty in making necessary changes to combat the problems.

Fraud is defined as a deliberate misrepresentation that causes a person or business to suffer damages, often in the form of monetary losses through deception or concealment. And Occupational Fraud as defined by the ACFE is the use of one’s occupation for personal enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or assets. Traditional fraud triangle theory by Donald Cressey explains that propensity of fraud occurring in an organization lies on three critical elements which are Pressure, Opportunity, and Rationalization.

Each year more than 16 million dollars worth of unemployment fraud is identified by Labor Department investigation--and that is likely just

The personnel and payroll cycle includes the hiring of employees, recording hours worked, withholding and, recording of taxes, distributing payment for work performed, and properly documenting the termination of employees. Payroll can be a significant expense for a company and without proper internal controls can be vulnerable to fraud. Some common types of the fraud within the payroll cycle consist of ghost employees, claiming unworked hours, and pay rate alteration. The objective of a payroll audit is to determine if the current balances in the audit period are fairly stated and in accordance with accounting principles. According Arens, Elder, and Beasley, “Tests of controls and substantive tests of transactions procedures are the most important means of verifying account balances in the payroll and personnel cycle” (2012, p. 664). An

Employee theft is a crime that is costing U.S. companies a great deal of money. Employee thefts are growing in number, partially because the perpetrators really do not see themselves as criminals and rationalize what they are doing in much the same way as taxpayers rationalize income tax fraud. Employee theft is one of many personnel problems that is easier to prevent than to solve. Prevention should begin before an applicant becomes an employee. Some theft