Dead peasants insurance

[VectraMan]

Companies were doing this for non-valuable employees.
Companies were continuing to do this for ex-employees.
Companies were not obtaining permission from the employees beforehand.

Why is that a problem? The employer pays the premium, the employer gets the pay out of the employee dies. It's nothing to do with the employee. Anybody who wants to insure me is welcome to do so.

The only issue here is that they're getting tax breaks on policies for employees that no longer work for them.

[threaded]

Why is that a problem? The employer pays the premium, the employer gets the pay out of the employee dies. It's nothing to do with the employee. Anybody who wants to insure me is welcome to do so.

The only issue here is that they're getting tax breaks on policies for employees that no longer work for them.

The problems start because these are nothing but tax shelters, and when the tax go investigating, as they occasionally do, the surviving relatives get a nasty shock several years after the death. The shock is not just that this sort of thing was done, but also accountants and lawyers have to be paid to tell the tax man to fsck off, usually eating all the side bet (the insurance policy publicly told to the now deceased employee as a sweetener to get them to sign up, thereby allowing the secret jackpot for the company) which off course has already been distributed and spent.

It has also led to some criminal conduct in this sort of scenario: relative A investigates how much was really left, and they see in court documents that deceased was worth several £100k, but they only saw a few £, and thereby think relative B pocketed the lot, get all outraged, and go searching for 'their' money, which of course is a total surprise to relative B. One can easily see that with some people this can rapidly spiral into violence.