Cash only businesses

Funnily enough there was a thread on Consumer Issues just recently giving out about everyone moving to card only and they miss cash businesses.

Everything's about balance. There's hassle dealing with cash, and there's hassle dealing with cards. You wouldn't believe the hassle it can be to try and query different merchant services providers about their rates, and trying to work out which will work best and whether it's worth the hassle. I can understand people not wanting to bother. And when you're on small margins anyway, the services provider taking a percentage no matter how small always seems to sting. I can't see many businesses surviving being cash only for much longer though.

I would have thought it was obvious it's to dodge the tax man.

If you ever see a taxi man paying income tax then he's not a taxi man.

Chinese restaurants and take aways....."sorry, card reader is broken". Funny that...it's been six months now. Going to get it fixed any time soon?"

There is no law saying dealing in cash is illegal. You dont have to have a card machine.

As long as they are making a tax return whether they accept cards or not is irrelevant.

I think the issue is more about how accurate their tax returns are, rather than that they are not making any tax returns.

It’s very hard for revenue to contest a deliberately low declared income if they can’t just look at your bank statement to gauge your actual revenue.

Cash is legal tender and they are perfectly entitled to accept cash only. In the same way you are entitled to take your business elsewhere. They may be benefiting from those of us who choose to take our business to cash only places,

Many smaller independently owned retailers will often buy in stock too using cash from the till. This would be for smaller occasional suppliers, it suits both parties. Cash for self employed tradespeople is common too.

The government is always keen to push the cashless society concept, Covid has been a Godsend for them in this regard.

What annoys me is being asked to pay in cash but seeing VAT on the bill.

Absolutely. The businesses are being told to close/limit/restrict, but there are few supports. They need to do whatever they have to do to survive.

Let me simpifly it even further.

Revenue make up a number and you have to pay it.

They are never wrong!

Not true at all.

Revenue are actually impartial.

They just insist you pay what you owe.

No more or no less.

From personal experience I will disagree with you but thats an argument for another day!

I think certain businesses know what works for them and some may feel there better off without card payment.

I do get the impression from cash only businesses is they aren't overly worried about somebody walking away from them because they don't use cash.

Agreed, I know a number of small business owners, the impression out there is everything is nice and dandy since re opening, it is absolutely not the case, I'm hearing business levels down as much as 40%, a lot of shoppers gone on line and this before small businesses even start dealing with substantial rent arrears, warehoused tax debt and dealing with insurance companies still refusing to pay out on business interruption polices. Separately and quickly forgotten in all the PUP bashing that's gone on is the fact there are still 350k employees of private businesses having 75% of their wages paid through wage subsidy schemes.

There's a Pile of economic Shyte coming very , very soon

In my experience it's often one's in supermarkets/shops.

Maybe they think they are experts at it, but based on what I've seen, it's rubbish and probably a majority of self-employed people who I've dealt with or known have their own ways of dodging income tax.

For example how does revenue determine how many days a week a taxi driver has worked, if the taxi driver drives around with their meter off? How can they enforce a payment in court on a takeaway that claims it had lower income than it did, based on just some average amount they picked out of a hat, based on what other similar takeaways in the area reported (if any exist!)?

The "best estimate that someone in Revenue's position can do" has nothing to do with the actual cashflow of a business.

It's similar to how the government just believed some bank person's figure of "€8 billion needed for bailout", when the actual figure turned out to be something noone knew (something like €64 billion in the end). The point I'm making is that it's NOT easy for Revenue to accurately know how much someone has earned - they may think they know, but they don't have a clue in reality. This is not an "Irish" problem, it's a problem in every single country - it won't be solved just by switching everything to use credit cards, but at least it will make it slightly harder to under-declare income.

You know very little about how revenue work.