"1.5m cheated out of minimum wage"

From The Metro:

More than 1.5 million workers are being "cheated" out of the national minimum wage by dishonest employers, with hairdressers, hotel and bar staff most likely to suffer, according to new research.

The TUC said workers across the country are still taking home less than the legal minimum wage because of rogue employers who were paying below the adult rate of £5.73 an hour...

Woah! Hold it right there!

People on income support or jobseeker's allowance who work a few hours a week have a "take home pay" of precisely £0.00 as their benefits are reduced by £1 for every £1 earned.

If they work enough hours at £5.73 an hour to qualify for Working Tax Credits, their "take home pay" is £1.72, because 31% gets taken away as tax and 39% in WTC withdrawal.

Why do the lefties never mention this?

The DWP's TBMT (Table 1.1 b) shows that a single person over 25 who earns £185 per week pays roughly the same in PAYE as he or she can claim in WTC.

What is the point?*

Here's an idea: how about reducing the income withdrawal rate for income support to the same as the basic rate of PAYE (31%). It then wouldn't be tapered to nil until you reached weekly earnings of £194. There'd be no need for a separate system of means-testing either, as claimants would just be given a BR tax code, i.e. no personal allowance. That way we wouldn't need all the faff of WTC - it could just be scrapped. And for those not claiming benefits, why not give them a personal allowance of £185 or £194 a week as well, which is just under £10,000 a year?

So even if their boss cut a few corners and paid only £4 an hour, the true "take home pay" for income support claimants would be £2.76 per hour (better than what they've got now and without the faff) and for non-claimants, take home pay would be £4 an hour, a shade more than £5.73 minus PAYE.

* BQ answers that in the comments.