Joiner charging £15 for invoice

[clothearedpotatohead]

Had someone come out a couple of weeks ago to do a small job.

Quoted £55. Came and did it, all good.

Asked after if he needs my email for the invoice. Crickets.

2 weeks later he’s come back and said it’s £55 cash or £70 with an invoice. “Let me know which works best for you”

I think it’s bullshit. He obviously doesn’t want to declare his income (again, bullshit – pay your taxes) and if he wanted to charge £15 for an invoice he should have said so in advance.

Just pay cash, who cares.

You’re being totally petty - he’s quoted you pre work, you should have had the £55 ready in cash to pay him immediately - the very fact he’s done the work and you’ve still not paid him is very telling.

You try running your own business as a trades person, it’s not easy for them especially with awkward customers like you that love making them wait to be paid.

The extra is not for an invoice as such, it’s for VAT. But yes, illegal.

I’m sorry, that’s outrageous. I would get the invoice and attach correspondence informing him I was paying £55. Quote properly.

Im self employed, I don’t quote my ‘tax dodging prices’ then charge £15 for an invoice, that’s just not on.

I couldn't get excited about this personally. Often the only way these small businesses manage to survive is by doing a certain amount of cash in hand jobs. Remember millionaires manage to avoid paying huge sums of tax 'legally' whilst us PAYE idiots are paying every single penny.
It's a very small amount of money, just choose the £70 if you want to make sure he is paying all his tax

Well if he chargers BAT then the customer is responsible for the extra 20% - you pay the VAT!

Well, you’re paying the tax. You should pay on completion of the job.

How do you know it's for VAT? He might not even be at the VAT threshold

Not correct. If he is VAT registered then the VAT should have been in the quote. He is offering a cash in hand job to avoid tax as it's such a small job

You pay the VAT. It's on you to clarify if its net or gross.

I quote Tens of Thousands for the work I do and do clarify it's excluding VAT but people generally know that goods and services attract VAT so you can't quibble . He's being nice offering you a cash price. If you are offended by tax dodging pay the VAT.

Well he can’t really change the price after the initial quote, he should have said at the time. Still, it wouldn’t particularly bother me except I never have cash and it’s unusual to need it these days. It would depend on what the job was whether I wanted an invoice or not - whether anything could go wrong after, for example.

If he is claiming the extra is for 'VAT' then he is a CF as 20% of £55 is £11 not £15.

Why didn't you pay him a couple of weeks ago when he did the work? That's the worst bit about the post

He should have been upfront - I often get quoted for 'X if cash Y if not'. Up to you. Mind you I still usually get some sort of receipt for MY taxes (I used to flip properties so declared the amount I spent on doing them up).

If he is claiming the extra is for 'VAT' then he is a CF as 20% of £55 is £11 not £15

Plus the time for writing the receipt. And that’s cheap considering he’s having to chase for payment m.

Yeah he's dodging declaring his income

Illegal tax evasion costs the country tens of billions of pounds in evaded tax, and VAT evasion is a large component of that, by small businesses/tradesmen illegally not charging VAT when they are required to do, typically by accepting cash payments that don't go through their books. Not only are they evading VAT, they're also evading income tax and NIC, and many may also be illegally claiming more benefits than they're entitled to because of underdeclared income. It's a massive, growing problem. For £55/£70 it doesn't sound too bad, but if this guy is doing that every day for "small jobs", it soon mounts up to hundreds and thousands evaded in tax each year for just one person. Trouble is it becomes "the norm" and he'll start doing it for bigger jobs too. I had a car repaired after an accident and was openly quoted "£1800 but £1500 for cash vat free", and a few months earlier offered scaffolding for our house (all sides) for "£2,400 or £2,000 cash without VAT". It's endemic now, and often for far more than the odd tenner here and there.

Most traders won't give invoices/receipts for "cash" jobs because it means there's an audit trail leading back to them, i.e. if HMRC investigate you, the property developer, they may trace back your payments to the dodgy tradesmen to check he's put the income through his books.

Without a receipt/invoice, of course, there's no guarantee, warranty, Fensa certificate for windows, etc.

I would never use a tradesperson who even suggested a cash price. They are telling you who they are right there i.e. someone who is happy to lie.

And don't forget that is isn't just about avoiding paying taxes to the evil, faceless HMRC. Not declaring income enables parents fathers to avoid paying CMS, as anyone who regularly reads MN knows only to well.

Is it? Not many people are paid at the end of their working day. Most of us, employed or self employed, are paid in arrears for the work we do. I've not been been paid for my last 2 weeks work yet because my invoice terms are 14 days, I invoice after work completed,.like most self employed.
No chance I'd be paying cash, he can pay his tax like the rest of us.

I asked him to send me the invoice and he disappeared!

What format was his quote?

I never ever ask for a cash price and I never get offered it. Over the years I've built up a great network of honest skilled and hard working tradesmen. I have occasionally paid cash but I almost never have as I consider it scummy behaviour. It's theft basically and it's massively unfair on all the honest businesses out there.

Telling?! I wasn’t there on the day, I asked immediately if he needed an email address to send the invoice and he didn’t reply to my message for 2 weeks

I would never delay paying for work completed

Did you even read the OP? 🤷🏻

@AbbeFausseMaigre

Very good point. My own child's father does a lot of cash in hand homers and pays a pittance in maintenance.

I agree completely! It’s not ‘getting one over on HMRC’.

And we didn’t agree cash in advance – if he’d just given his actual price I could have made a decision based on that price

No one else who has done work recently has raised the price if invoicing was involved – they’ve just sent over the invoice and I’ve paid it