Hairdresser only taking cash

[Snowleopardsspots]

I live in London and have my colour done every 6 months. It costs £265. Hairdressers is nice enough, the lady who runs/owns it/does my hair is an Albanian woman.
when I started going 2-3 years ago, they kept saying oh the card machine is broken, can you pay cash? There is a card machine next door. Now my daily limit is £50 so I would have to visit the cash machine six times leading up to the appt. I am disabled and do not go out every day. When I first went They gave me the bank details and I paid straight into the account. Just had my hair done and said do you still have the same account? She said oh we are a cash only salon now. You can transfer the money today but in future we are cash only. I heard them telling a few people on the phone when making appointments ‘it is cash only’ and a couple of people actually left and came back with cash. Is this a common thing? Is it time to find a new hairdresser?

Define criminal.

Avoiding tax, sounds quite likely to me.

🤣 yes, that’s a way of looking at it. However even by your example there is no advantage of getting legitimate customers to pay cash. It draws less attention not to be a cash only business.

Money laundering - add her name to the vape shops and Turkish barbers and American candy shops and on and on - why don’t the cops, the immigration services and HMRC know if the rest of the whole country know!

Not only because she's Albanian.
Because she is demanding cash only for very expensive haircuts and is Albanian. High cash turnover is how organised criminals laundering money. Albania has huge organised crime syndicates.
Tax evasion is criminal.

not a hairdresser but a tradesperson asked me to pay cash for work done, i asked for an invoice in case i needed to claim on insurance, or it needed to be redone. And after a bit of too and fro, i got my invoice. After that? i don't particularly care why they want cash, but i will be wanting a proper invoice (with a number, on their company headed paper.

Find a new hairdresser. They are fiddling their taxes and probably also breaking employment laws as well as potentially having this setup to launder drug money. Have nothing to do with them

Not sure about £800 but £50 is bizarre. Even my tightwad bank allows me £300 - though it sends little messages if I do that too often (in its opinion). I don't mind paying cash (and deprecate places that only take cards, esp pubs etc - this is the way to Chinese style government surveillance of accounts and anyway why should my bank know what I spend my money on?!) for small amounts but £265 is too much and more than I would like to be carrying on my person. OP needs a new hairdresser.

You may be ok with tax dodging but those of us who appreciate good public services aren’t.

I've never heard of a hairdresser who only takes cash. I would be looking for another one.

And if your hair dresser is telling you the card charges are too high they’re taking the piss out of you too. Banks charge loads to pay cash in these days. Cards are far easier. It allows accounts and tax returns to be automated too when they take cards.

Take aways take cash for the same reason. Put the cash to one side rather than running it through the toll. Less income tax to declare but the main trick is pretending they’re still below the VaT registration threshold.

If you’re happy with the hairdresser, surely you can manage to get the money out to pay in cash over the six months in between your appointments?

hand car washes, ubiquitous nail bars, our local fruit and veg market stalls
prefer cash, £10 minimum spend to use a card, Kebab van, taxis here,
(there is no Uber) 4x moribund Turkish Barbers, window cleaners,
monthly gardener, etc.all cash
shrugs

I wouldn't use them because I want my card points. Yes they will not be declaring all income I expect. That's a lot of money . I know prices vary but I'm in the SE and a top salon is 215.

🤣🤣🤣. You have no idea if they’re fiddling their taxes and it seems a bit of a leap to think theyre laundering drug money! Only on Mumsnet 🤣🤣🤣

Because if people had the option of paying by card, most of them would, so there’d be a paper trail of the legitimate income. By making it all cash, they don’t have to provide any kind of paper trail, and can invent whatever figures they like.

Foreign owned tax evasion obviously.
Racist or not.

I suspect the replies would be very different if OP either hadn’t mentioned the owners ethnicity OR had said she was white English.

It’s common knowledge. You don’t have to look far to read about it

Op most modern bank cards have a lost/stolen block on the banking app.
Very simple to use then unblock if simply misplaced.

Why does everyone assume that cash payment means fiddling the books?!
Its legal tender and perfectly legitimate for it to be a businesses preferred method of payment. It just means they get to keep 100% of the profits rather than every other bugger taking a little slice of the pie!
If you don't like it, go elsewhere, simple!

She’s clearly tax dodging which affects all of us who depend on public services. You should find someone else.

@Grammarnut 'Not sure about £800 but £50 is bizarre. Even my tightwad bank allows me £300'

I was wrong, I thought it was £800, but its actually £1,000. Not all ATM's allow it though.
This is from HSBC but Barclays and several others have similar limits, but it depends on the type of account you have. The OP has limited her own account to only £50 though.

• £300 for HSBC Bank Account and HSBC Basic Bank Account
• £500 for HSBC Advance
• £1,000 for HSBC Premier and HSBC Premier (retained Jade benefits)

I’d pay my hairdresser however she wanted, me to but she’s been cutting my hair for 20 years.

The Inland Revenue hasn't existed since 2005.

Exactly, and the beauty is that in doing so they pay (some) tax on the cash, as it turns into turnover and some profit when washed through a cash only business. So many people think cash only businesses are a vehicle for evading tax, when in fact they often generate more tax when ‘dirty’ cash is laundered through them. The tax paid is just the cost of turning dirty money into clean money!