Hairdresser asking me to pay in cash

[Sally3490]

I've been going to my hairdressers for about 10 years. It's quite pricey £160 for full highlights and a cut (London). When I was last in they asked if I would pay in cash in future. The ATM is on route so in theory I could, but it adds some level of inconvenience and I'd rather not be carrying that amount of cash with me. But also, I feel it's damn cheeky. They are charging alot of money and should be paying their taxes. AIBU?

My son’s barber will give you a discount if you pay cash.

This! Pre COVID I was £79 and had waist length hair, now my bob is £150 to cut, highlight,.finish and that's outskirts of Glasgow. I've shopped around and can't find for any less

You get charged more to bank the cash though….so either you don’t understand the terms of your business account/don’t check your statements which is really bad for your business, or you just aren’t paying it in, in which case your avoiding the tax…

£160 is very cheap so I’d think long and hard before going elsewhere! I don’t live in London and pay £120 for a toner, trim and blow dry!

But, you are not being unreasonable to not want to pay in cash. I never carry cash and stopping to get money out is a pain in the bum (in my opinion).

Ask about a bank transfer. If you’re a long standing customer, they should trust you to do this. If they won’t, then it’s obviously tax dodging

If they are trying to avoid card fees, they could ask for a bank transfer, which can be done on your phone then and there. So you could request that alternative. If they say no, then you have a choice re: supporting those who are, possibly, tax-avoiding.

If id been going somewhere 10 years and they asked for cash id give them cash ! Or you could just find a new hairdresser 🤷‍♀️

I’ve been going to my hairdresser for 20 years and she has only ever taken cash. Not a problem as far as I’m concerned.

I think that is a very different scenario. Times have changed a lot over those 20 years. The OP is used to paying the same hairdresser by card and is suddenly being asked to produce cash.

Personally, I pay all small businesses cash when I can. I also ask for cash or bank transfer. Not for HMRC reasons but purely economics. If I were to take card, I would have to pay for specific GDPR PCI card info compliance software, the hardware to accept card, the fees on top of it and the additional processing admin. To accommodate this I would need to raise my prices to factor in those extra costs and additional admin and policies. My clients (and many others) are really struggling financially. To put up my prices means I market myself out of my field and lose customers.

She’s not being unreasonable to ask. You are being unreasonable to think it’s unreasonable that she’s asked. You have the choice to say yes or no.

My experience is that those people not only complain about services not being great they’re also the people that manipulate the system to get every benefit going. Like the person I know who goes to the gym every day, walks miles but has a blue badge (legitimately originally but not necessary now) so never pays for parking (always parks on a single yellow line or in car parks with free disabled parking). Or the other person that is constantly using the NHS to investigate every little niggle when they could afford to sort things out privately.

You either believe in low taxes/small welfare state or you don’t. If you don’t, be authentic about your choices.

But they all say they don’t want to pay for immigrants as their spurious justification. It’s not that: everyone has things the Government pays for that we don’t agree with - it’s part of living in a democratic, civilised society. The immigrants will be supported whether you pay your taxes or not but other things like decent social care or social services support for struggling families will be cut. And waiting lists for hip surgeries will be massive.

But so long as you manage to continually expect other people to fund your public services that you all benefit from then you just don’t care.

That amount of cash? It's £160 you aren't Pablo escobar.

Why assume its to not pay tax?

Do it or don't do it, but be prepared to be dropped.

Just say you don't want to as you carry your current spending on a credit card and pay back end of the month, we do this to get rewards so I imagine it's quite common and they can't really argue with that.

I don’t believe you’re not dodging tax. I’m sorry but I just don’t. If you get a card reader and take cards it costs about 0.5% of every £ spent. And then you can bypass accountants by using software that plops your self assessment and accounts into your lap. No admin or processing. So much simpler. And no trips to the bank. And no cash deposit fees from the bank. You’re either dodging tax. Or crazy.

This is so so true! When you know see how common it is you can’t unsee it. The level of fraud is staggering. 9/10 no matter what the excuses / ‘reasons’ given for asking for cash it’s for tax evasion. They’re laughing about what a mug you are behind your back for believing their nonsense.

Yep - the claim that using cards means "additional processing admin" is the giveaway here. It really doesn't, it's much less admin that dealing with cash.

If you're putting it through the books 🤣

I’m a photographer. I’m not dodging tax. If I were to take card payments, I would lose about £200 of my wage for each job. Plus the additional processing fees from my third party system. Everything has gone up. From my memory cards, my hard drives, my editing subscription software, the albums, the online galleries and CRM software, my insurance. The cost of fuel to get there, the services and repairs on my cameras, ensuring my computers are updated and ran into the ground before my updates are obselete. Oh, and not to mention the cameras and lenses themselves. It’s all much more expensive and people’s wages haven’t gone up at the same rate of inflation. I cannot justify increasing my costs even more if I don’t have to as it will have a knock on effect on my clients who are already struggling to justify the “luxury” of a wedding photographer. Not to mention a highly qualified, awarded and experienced one.

Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING goes through an invoice system so my business records are clear as day. I am just choosing to remove one option that gives me an additional cost to run my business, one that doesn’t affect my work or the quality and standard I give to my clients. It’s simple economics.

Just last week I spent half of my assigned editing day just proving that I have no access to client records and card data. It almost cost me an extra £300 for software to prove I’m compliant with something I do not touch in my business. My third party gallery system allows for card payments for print sales, which again, I have to administrate and ensure their compliance, and when I’m lucky enough to take a print sale from someone who values seeing their prints on a wall, a cut gets taken from this. This one I absorb, for the sake of client ease, but I have the choice to not take the hit on the larger invoices which will make the difference to what I’m feeding my kids with that month.

Whether you believe me or not is up to you, I’m not responsible for that. My conscious is very clear, and I certainly do not assume that everyone who takes cash is tax dodging. The economy and wider issue of multiple charges on top of charges for people who are trying to make a living is the problem.

Anyhow, I’m gonna take my hard earned (accounted for) cash and pay to see my kids in their school play later, totally guilt free. Peace.

I work in the industry and I know it's very tough to make good money as a photographer so you have my sympathy there. I still have no idea what additional processing taking cash avoids.

Why on earth do you think card payments would cost you £200 extra? If you’re getting ripped off for a card machine the rental is about £25 a month. If you’re getting ripped off for transaction charges it’s 1.5% of every invoice. So bill £1,000, pay £15 in transaction charges. Where are you getting £200 a job from?????

It’s not the card reader fees alone. It’s the third party processing fees from CRM software, then the additional fees from the company connected to that for me to receive the funds. I have a system that works where I can opt out of card payments.

If I added a card reader separately, I would then need to pay for a different service (on top of the one that works perfectly for my gallery, accounting and client needs). This would then require my time and energy to administrate the link between multiple software platforms. I also would need to create either an online method (or in person method) to use this.

I would then need to add on annual PCI compliant audits and policy updates (at my cost) and software to scan my systems monthly to ensure my PCI compliance.

Add up the annual costs for all this then divide by the average amount of jobs nets the figure. £200 is not just the card reader fees, it’s so much more complex than that.

Oh, and I’ve neglected to add that changing my bank account back to a business one to accommodate this would also add a charge to have that account, a “loading time” where the funds seem to sit in a banking cloud somewhere earning the bank interest, then another charge to withdraw my own funds.

Do I really need to keep justifying this??? Does everyone who prefers cash have to jump through hoops to explain why??

Perhaps the real question here isn’t to see if someone’s is tax dodging or make judgements, it’s to be curious and ask: what the hell is going on in our banking and economy system? Why is digital only being pushed? Why oh why are normal self employed people being priced out of their own careers and jobs??

That's dodgy, she should be using a business account.

Thank you for asking with kindness. It’s basically a number of additional expenses/software costs/admin & extra charges that can be avoided to both minimise price increases which the client would absorb and maximise the profit margin (take home salary after all the expenses).

Every self employed person has a different business model, photographers too. It costs me on average £12000 per year to run my business due to what I offer and how. I have to tread a fine balance between earning an ok wage (if any, on very bad years) or pricing myself too high for the market and not getting enough work (whilst juggling solo parenting).

If I can avoid taking on additional costs that I can manage in an alternative way, I do. I don’t compromise on the quality of my albums and prints, or actual service, but I will compromise on how I receive my payment, as I feel that my service and the value of that is far more important than whether I have a “pay by card” option. It’s been 20 years, and never a problem.

Normally I am in defence of card payments. However, for some traders it is really expensive. Sole traders aren’t subject to business banking charges the same way as other businesses and hairdressers usually fall into this as they are usually not turning over enough to fall into business rules.

So with the small margins it is easy to see why hairdressers will choose to only accept cash. However, saying that, when mine stopped taking card she moved to accepting cash or bank transfers. I just do the bank transfer there and then from my phone. Just ask if you can do that instead.

Digital only is being pushed as it is so much more simple to meet HMRC requirements. Get a NatWest business bank account, take card payments only, pay for things with cards and the (free) free agent accounting software automatically does your accounts, income tax and vat return. It provides data in a making tax digital compliant manner. It generates and sends invoices. It’s simple and seamless. Why would you do anything else? (unless you’re trying to avoid tax by taking cash of course).

For sole traders the handling of cash is usually free as under a certain annual amount they aren’t required to have a business account.