AIBU to refuse to pay cash in hand?

On the gov.uk website it shows that £6.5bn is lost to benefits fraud per year and 5.5bn to tax fraud, but a whopping 59.2bn shortfall in the difference between tax expected and tax paid! This is largely undeclared earnings I assume...

Imagine trying to operate a tax system which had to take a myriad personal circumstances into account when calculating the amount due. Our tax code is already one of the most complex in the world!

There should be legitimate help available to person A so they don’t have to commit a crime to survive. Potentially funded by greater sanctions for person B…

is not unreasonable to make decisions that only impact you based on flawed assumptions

Not a chance.

And important for us all to bear in mind.

This is a very good case where things are not clear-cut.

It’s very unlikely that you could and if you tried you might be accused of aiding and abetting tax evasion. The bank may have to close your account as banks cannot handle the proceeds of crime (ie the unpaid VAT remaining in your bank account).

What places are cashless. None o know of in my town

A roofer recently asked me to pay him the £8k bill in cash (id save on the VAT)

how am i supposed to withdraw such a large sum without the bank asking questions?

@CandyColouredEggshells

the HOC subsidised restaurants is not exclusively for MPs. They are only a small part of the workforce

Also, most MPs are normal people, they don’t earn a huge wage. There are easier ways to make money than doing that job! They’re not all Boris Johnsons and Rishi Sunaks you know

I don’t understand why anyone wants cash. It’s totally inconvenient

so many places are cashless, it’s becoming hard to spend

My partner requests his wages in cash. Still pays tax NI and into his pension though.

It's never unreasonable to pay how you prefer but making assumptions is unreasonable.

It means their wages aren't going into an account that's nearing the bottom of the aforementioned overdraft, so the overdraft isn't eating it.

I always send a copy of the bank's notification of payment. With my bank (Lloyds group) it actually formulates a generic message too. Makes life easy for me and the recipient cannot deny that the payment was made to their account. So easy to keep track of too.

@Jellycatspyjamas
you get instant notifications if you’re paid via bank transfer

i run a small business in addition to being employed. If someone pays me cash I, and they, know I’ve been paid. Paying by bank transfer means I need to chase payment which is credit control - it takes time and therefore costs me money to keep track of who has paid and to follow up when they don’t. It also costs me money if they simply don’t pay - small amounts so no worth chasing through more formal means.

Cash flow because I can then use that cash to pay for services that I use as part of the business, eg I always pay my clinical supervisor in cash. I also don’t pay charges for paying in cash but do for using card transactions as well as needing to pay for the card machine itself.

It’s all accounted for and taxed accordingly, it’s just easier as a very small business. I’m already paying 40% tax on my business earnings so the 2/3% for banking services and the loss of money if people don’t pay starts to make the business unviable.

Yes, and probably a small percentage of customers generally use retail-store bathrooms too - but that's not a reason to discontinue them if you already have them.

Subsidised restaurants for employees are pretty widespread, no? And the cost of things like that is an absolute drop in the ocean in the context on public spending. I'm perfectly happy for members of parliament to have good working conditions. We want to persuade capable (and not independently wealthy) people to do it.

Sure, I'm not going to agree with every spending decision that this or any other government makes. But I think the idea that all governments are out to make as much money as possible out of the tax payer to spend on enriching themselves or on their own very narrow interests is very wide of the mark.

(but stamp duty is a highly dysfunctional tax that should be replaced by a wealth tax and/or increase inheritance tax, and nursing degrees should be better funded)

She may be spending the cash rather than using the atm to pull it out of a bank account. No law that says has to be paid into the bank . Supermarkets, petrol stations restuarants etc all accept cash you know

Thst qr payment is commonplace in Asia. Is it only monzo that do it? Its not something ive known all thw big banks to offer

I use bank transfers for my business. Monzo creates a QR code, I type in the amount, they scan the QR code and confirm the payment.

It takes as much time as putting a card into a machine and inputting your pin, though more time than contactless.

This is a bit of a fallacy. It will cost your hairdresser in fees to deposit the cash, and will take time out of their day to go to the bank / post office to deposit it. When you add it all up, there is no coat saving.

You're mis-comparing employment against self employment. Medical consultants may be on a hundred pounds per hour, but that's a wage - the private/self employed consultants will be charging a lot more. Likewise, self employed plumbers may charge £100 per hour, but employed ones will be getting wages of £25 per hour. You can't compare apples against pears. Self employment always costs more as there's no employer to provide the tools, equipment, paid time off for holidays/sickness, training, insurance, transport, etc etc.

Depends on the bank. There are still business banks that don't provide for scanning cheques.

Tradesmen, always bank transfer.

When I left school, if you weren't very clever you became a motor mechanic or got yourself a bag of tools to make and fix things and got paid an average wage.
Now, for reasons I can't fathom, they are on the same hourly rates as consultant surgeons!!