AIBU to refuse to pay cash in hand?

[Dontasksillyquestions]

This recently came up in conversation with a friend and she disagreed with me.

I generally avoid hiring anyone who asks to be paid cash in hand. I don’t see how cash is more convenient these days unless it’s to avoid tax, benefits rules, etc., and I don’t want to be involved. I also rarely carry cash and getting to a cash machine is inconvenient.

Last year I stopped using a regular gardener when he suddenly asked for cash only, despite there being no payment issues (I always transferred the money on the day he’d done the work). My friend thinks I’m being ridiculous and that it’s none of my concern how people run their business. AIBU?

I accept cash and I run this through my books. My accountant updates my balance to HMRC with an average amount taken each week so I don’t dodge my responsibilities as a small business owner. HMRC are looking at money in vs. money out - if you have a surplus of expenses and regularly top up your bank accounts with cash it will show a discrepancy and trigger an investigation which no one wants. I prefer cash as I don’t have to pay card fees. If I accept online bookings I levy the bank charge on the customer and let them decide if they’d prefer the 2.5% surcharge for bookings.

I pay cash for a lot of services I book and I keep cash at home.

Was in Halfords the other day and their tills were down, I paid over £100 in cash whilst customers had to leave their purchases behind. It’s good to be prepared and keep some cash on you.

We use a couple of tradies to do work on our house and flats

they all say they will always come straight out to us because we ask for a price agree it there and then and we always pay in cash when the jobs done

Some of them have had huge problems getting final payments from customers in the past

If I’m asked to pay cash for something I just do. As far as I’m concerned I don’t work for HMRC and tend to assume most people are decent enough to do the right thing and if not well, not my business really is it .

My sister in law is a teacher
tutors cash in hand and has done for years

while always ranting about benefit cheats and the like taking from the state blah blah

when I pointed out to her that she wasn’t much different as she was not declaring a decent wedge of money each month

she said “well that’s different “ 😂

People like her make me cross because she isn’t any different to anyone else but thinks she is

My garage prefer card payments because it makes it easier to do their books and saves money in accountants' fees, and no-one needs to go to the bank to pay in cash (much harder now that branch closures mean that it's a 6 mile trip).

My plumber says the same, his accountant uses a system called Zoom, that somehow links his bank account transactions to his accountants or something.

I’ve just paid in 385 in cash for some work on my sons car
got a receipt
I don’t see the problem with it
garage will take card or cash

You see I think tradies should be banned from being paid in cash and any shops used by them should be banned from taking cash. But in compensation they should have a legal right to increase an invoice amount by 10% for every week the invoice remains unpaid.

I think HMRC should be actively promoting a tip off line for businesses that demand cash of offer a discount for cash and any businesses suspected of money laundering and employing illegal immigrants.

Yes of course we do.

Yup i don't work with anyone who insists on cash. I suspect most are a) trying to avoid vat registration threshholds b) probably underdeclaring income for tax purposes c) probably underdeclaring income for benefit & CMS purposes.

Im happy to pay slightly more to cover bank transaction costs.

That's not a genuine question. Its snide and you know it.

My husband is a window cleaner. He accepts cash, card and apple pay. But there is a massive argument for him that cash is easier because he knows instantly who has paid and he can cross them off his sheet straight away

With card payments, he spends at least an hour every night chasing up payments, traipsing through his bank accounts trying to work out whose payment goes to who because not every bank shows the payment reference. He has issues where he knows the name of one customer, but the payment is made by that person's partner which might be in a different name, or a maiden name - so he then has to spend ages trying to match it all up. Then he has to work out who hasn't paid and spend ages chasing them all up becuase that person 'forgot'

cash is a lot easier. He can add it all together and pop to the post office across the road to pay it all in and the job is done in less than 5 mins.

Hes never done anything cash in hand. Everything is declared because quite frankly, our ability to get a good mortgage deal is pretty fucking important.

if i get asked to pay cash, i tell them i will need a receipt. That usually stops them. I don't care if it is official on a receipt block, but i want them to confirm that i gave them x amount on y day for z service, name and signature.

What they do after that is their business.

Accepting cash for a job is cash in hand. Working cash in hand doesn’t mean not declaring it, that’s just what people on this thread seem to be assuming/insisting. Of course in your case your DH is working cash in hand and declaring it, as many people do!

I won't pay cash for substantial amounts either. If I'm buying something for £20 off facebook marketplace and I have £20 in cash hand then that's the easiest way to pay. But I wouldn't pay for eg work done on the house in cash as a) it would be very inconvenient and b) the only plausible reason would be to avoid taxes etc which is illegal.

I think the problem is when a tradesperson asks you to pay in cash eg in return for a discount. If you prefer to pay in cash and they are happy to accept it then obviously that's fine.

I'd like to know how people who are happy to pay large sums in cash are actually getting their hands on the cash these days.

I have 2 bank accounts, and both of them have a cash point withdrawal limit of £200 pd. If I wanted to pay a builder, say, £2k in cash, I'd have to go to a cash machine every day for 5 days.

And it's no longer an easy matter to go into a branch to get cash. So many have closed, my town now has just 2 left, and one of those is rumoured to be closing. When I first moved here, we had a branch of all the main banks and building societies (two branches of Lloyds and NatWest).

If the last Lloyds closes as rumoured, the only place to get cash other than out of a machine, will be Nationwide.

The way I look at it is that as long as it is legal to carry and use cash in the UK it's not unreasonable for businesses to take it, and it's up to them if that's the only form of payment they want to accept. Likewise its not unreasonable for a customer to not want to pay in cash. But it is unreasonable to attempt to dictate to a business what means of payment it must take.

Having heard the stories from people who do run their own businesses of how much they can be strung along by people saying that they'll pay and then not I have a degree of sympathy for those that expect payment on completion in cash because its clear and simple.

You have to remember as well that for many one man bands or tradespeople they might have practical skills but not necessarily organisational or admin skills - so again the clarity and simplicity of cash makes sense to them.

In my experience most of those that do take cash do run it through the books, because if nothing else to borrow money, lease cars, phones etc etc some form credit history is necessary, and that means being able to show an ability to pay which means having cash going through banks statements and accounts.

Sure, I expect there are still some who don't, but I think it's been getting increasingly difficult to live 'off grid' from a tax/bank account perspective than it ever has, and if you look at countries where they have tried harder than in the UK to stamp out the use of cash the actual tax take hasn't changed...but administration costs have gone up.

£200 is quiet a low ATM limit though - I think mine is either £500 or £1,000, and I know if I go and use one of the machines in the branch I can get at least £2,000 because that's what they told me to do when I called in advance, expecting I'd need to pick up over the counter. That's with Barclays :)

That’s actually the definition of working ‘cash in hand’ in the Cambridge English Dictionary

They don’t get those things because they’ve chosen to be self employed, not because the government is being mean to them.

Cash in hand is obviously a way of scamming your way out of paying your fair share.

I live within easy walking distance of a Lloyd’s a TSB and a 2 post offices and a HSBc & Santander are maybe a 5 min drive away in the opposite direction.
so I’m lucky in that way
I can take out 500 on day on each of my accounts at a ATM

but we always have kept a few thousand in cash in the house just in case there is a zombie purge although I don’t know how good cash would be in that case 😂

And I always have a min of £150 £200 in my purse

today I paid 385 for the car
30 nails
8 in M&S
all in cash
no one said anything

Because being paid in cash isn’t illegal. He’s perfectly legally entitled to ask for payment in cash. Though I do understand why you’re wary, but that’s your personal moral stance and nothing to do with law.

I’d just tell him sorry, you don’t have time to get to a cash point and tell him you’ll make a bank transfer because it’s 2026, and then do a tinkly laugh.

YANBU. I don't use cash, and I'm not going to my own expense of travelling to a cashpoint (that uses Get Cash) to get cash out to make someone's life easier cos they cba with card payments or are trying to tax dodge.

I don't even use a bank card anymore so it's Apple Pay only, so I can only get cash out of a Natwest or Tesco cashpoint. We have one locally but if it's out of order I'd have to travel to find another.

Don't think I've used cash for the past five years or more.

No problem with people wanting cash, their choice. But they wouldn't be getting my business so I guess it's a case of how many others are willing to go along with it.

People are really funny about the vAT registration threshhold thing too and think its totally ok to keep money off books to avoid it.

It isnt. The vat free limit is to maintain healthy competition by giving new/smaller business a chance to get going and build up. I do think the government should consider increasing the registration threshhold but it us what it is and imho the dishonest tradespeople give the honest ones a bad name.

HMRc cannot increase it without creating a carve out for Northern Ireland due to NI still being deemed part of the EU for VAT purposes and the EU having an upper limit of threshold.

Why not drop the registration threshold to £20k. Then any business would faff to register and you would manage to skip the situation where one painter is VAT registered and forced to charge 20% more than another who isn’t (and remains under the threshold by taking a few months off a year).

Dropping your income by taking an extended holiday when you near the VAT threshold is perfectly legal. Choosing to take cash and not put it through the books to pretend you are still under the threshold is not legal.

Bank charges for businesses are high. Often if they need to pay employees or other trades and they like cash. Also for the business they know they have been paid, chasing payments is exhausting. If you have an invoice /receipt.