Quote Paying a plumber cash in hand is "morally wrong" because it denies the revenue vital funds, a Treasury minister said as the government outlined new ways of cutting down on £5bn in tax avoidance.
David Gauke, the exchequer secretary to the Treasury, risked shining a spotlight on whether any of his government colleagues have ever made cash in hand payments to plumbers when he described the practice as a large part of Britain's "hidden economy". Unquote
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poeple operate to current moral norms, as displayed by bankers, politicians, journalists, entertainers, pro footballers etc. Is that news?
We should not tax the things we want to happen, like working. We should tax the things we need to reduce, like fuel, smoking, and importing materials and finished goods.
I have long advocated a state pension age related (but not work related) that replaces the complex system of the dole and benefits, and zero income tax, with infinitely more taxes raised on the sale on non subsistence goods. Then scrap the minimum wage, because its no longer needed as people get the pension whether they work or not.
There are issues of policing BUT it has the following advantages
- people who live here pay the sales and import taxes on goods bought here. And high earners will WANT to live here. The presence of slots of stinkingly rich people here with miney to burn can only be goodm,, even if luxury goods are expensive.
- the labour market is totally flexible. People can work when they like for who they like - they lose no benefits by working - at anything at all. From fruit picking to washing cars and polishing your boots.
- because the state pension is limited to those who are actually born here, not those who arrive (tough, but fair) low income people will not find it easy to immigrate. However high earners to whom the state pension is almost an irrelevance, will.
- because taxation is not applied to subsistence goods - essentially food clothing and other basics - lower paid workers will be massively subsidised and be able to compete well with offshore workers without any directives needing to be applied. If the state pension is say £3.50 and hour you only need pay - say - £3 an hour on top of that to employ someone at a living wage and with no tax or NI to pay its not a bad crack.
- Because imported goods and materials are now expensive, there is a huge incentive to recycle refurbish and repair. Essentially it baises the national economy towards re-use and away from consumer buy and trash.
- naturally this free market in labour with the government simply not caring about who earns what - only what they spend and what they spend it on - would require exit from the EU. Well, so what?
Its time we put Britain first, and British workers, yea even unto the man who cuts your grass.
I used to feel bad about the odd fiddle. Now I do not, because I see the government wasting my money on wars based on lies, bankers being bailed out of their own self inflicted failure, and big fat contracts worth billions being awarded to the incompetant like G4S for no good reason.
Paying cash is not necessarily 'bent' - AFAIK unlike consumer bank accounts, business bank accounts charge per transaction so there is a cost in putting a cheque through the bank. As long as you get a valid receipt (VAT receipt where applicable) then paying some of the bills with cash which is then recycled by the tradesperson on every day expenditure is in no way wrong.
Obviously the suggestion by the consumer to the tradesperson that they "Pay cash, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, no names no pack drill no VAT and no income tax" is encouraging the tradesperson to contrave the taxation laws. At least we are not as paranoid as some Nordic countries where tax is/was so high that people went to a cashless economy and traded skills; "You mend my car and I'll paint your house" and similar. Whereupon they changed the law so that you had to declare all services done for other people regardless of if you were paid or not. Makes casual sex a finacially risky proposition. A charity f*ck should now appear on your income tax form. Please, not in this country!
It implies that the use of cash for any transaction is potentially a tax fiddle. Shops, bars, buses, taxis, newspaper sellers, milkmen etc. are all probably immoral.
And the payers are equally immoral for using cash which enables the fiddlers.
Is this politician trying to win votes?
The obvious answer is to abolish cash and make all transactions electronic, executed via a government cloud that tracks and logs everything. With some clever cloud-side coding the taxes could be collected automatically - PAYP not PAYE.
They'll be reintroducing schedule A tax next, for such services. As in:
Let's see, you just did the washing up, vacuumed the house, and cut the grass. That took you four hours. You might have employed someone at say £8/hour to do that, so £32 there. We want 20% of that, so £6.40 please.
What he actually said was that paying a plumber cash in hand *in order to get a discount* was morally wrong. However, that does not make such a good story for the newspapers; most people would probably already have a fairly good idea that the plumber was probably not going to declare such a payment.
we hae an itinerant hairdresser. Very fast very cheap. She is self employed, but the scope for offsetting every single thing, all the car, or most of it, all the tools, even a set of working clothes..phonecalls..even before a few quid a week may or may not slip into the purse for the tescos shop.
I doubt they have, as cash would be their own money why use their own when = they can get the tax payer to pay via expenses ?
Hearing that this morning has actually encouraged me to offer jobs cash in = hand, I think of it as equality, everyone should be able to "avoid" paying = tax until they are caught, or is "avoid" the wrong word.
She is perfectly entitled to claim for all these things, being self employed. But then only gets paid when actually working - no such thing as holiday or sick pay.
However, if her accounts don't show a reasonable income after expenses, the IR may look more closely.
That's complete and utter bollocks as you would know had you ever run your own business. You cannot "offset" every single thing and the rules relating to cars are complex and require the maintenance of a log if the car is used for mixed personal/business purposes. Much of the expense related to running a car cannot be offset against tax.
A set of working clothes hardly amounts to much and only a few trades, including lawyers can claim for working clothes. Tools yes of course why should one not be able to offset tax against these? Note that if at end of life any of these items are sold then VAT, income tax and possibly CGT must be paid on the sale value.
The picture you are painting of the self employed on the fiddle is a fantasy. Ask Dave TMH for example.
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