Is the move to a cashless society a dream just in the minds of those that have vested interests?
Throughout the summer and now at my local Fish & Chip shop, 'CASH ONLY PLEASE' signs are prominently displayed. This may be just a way for some businesses to avoid the increasing costs of dealing with cards of any type. After all, unless you bank cash (and pay a large commission for the privelege), then cash costs nothing to use.
There is a lot of sense in trading just in cash when it comes to the costs of moving money around.
With the Royal Mint printing new swish notes on plastic and the new £1 coin being the most secure ever, there seems to be no general wish to move to a cashless society so should we be prepared to deal with more traders who run their businesses in this way. Whilst there is the ever present notion that people dealing in cash are somehow on the fiddle, there are actually many very good reasons for honest traders to work this way as well.
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I don't use cash. If a shop is cash only I don't use it.
The last regular transaction I needed cash for was parking, with the advent of RingGo I no longer need to use it at all.
I use cash all the time. I don't see it dying out in the near future.
Whilst I will use options like Ringgo for convenience, they don't half cost a lot.
I would add that I can not recall any occasion when a cash payment has not been rung up on the till (except for charity donations/fetes, etc. and my window cleaner - sadly now retired).
RingGo is a total bargain, 60p extra for the convenience of not having to get up off my fat [***] and trudge down two flights of stairs to top up the old meter in the rain.
I think in general cash is on the decline. I look after a lot of city centre bars and restaurants and the split is maybe 60/40 between card and cash now. with things like apple pay even small payments like a coffee just go through as card transactions. A few small few independant operators may be making a stand now they cannot charge people fees for paying by card but ultimately they will have to give in and get on the bus so to speak.
The well though out MTD which seems to think that the tax black hole is caused by small traders, may well find out once your local plumbers and sparkys bank account is plugged into the HMRC machine they may well create a bigger cash economy than they are trying to fix.
Although I guess finding the punters with cash to pay you may be a problem in the future.
I thought that if you accepted cash there was an exemption from declaring it as income?
I'm sure I heard that in a pub somewhere....
Cash roof repairs are exempt from both VAT and Income Tax.
I think thats known as a Win Win in the industry.
A plumber once told me that if he didn't have to raise an invoice he didn't need to charge VAT "it's the law" as he said.
To prevent fraud it would now seem possible to track bank notes from cashpoint back to the bank and identify who has used them in the meantime. This technology must be available if MTD is possible?!
I was in an East End London pub last night (near West Ham) and there was a prominent "Cash Only" sign there. I've never seen that before in a pub, but then I've never really ventured into that part of London before.
of course its all well and good whilst the card machine works...but guess what happens when it doesn't....'cash only - card machine broken'...not great in the cashless society.
Of course the other reality is that with cash payments, you know generally they will be spent in the local community. The same cannot be said for those 'only for the rich' tax schemes which plant the cash abroad one way or another.
I am all for people paying the right tax...but lets at least keep the wealth/cash in the UK - that is as important.
We've had the opposite problem of late in my home town, the last local bank closed its branch so now there's only two cash machines, both of which have been known to run out of notes quite regularly. It's not too uncommon for the locals to be all in a tizz about their inability to get cash from anywhere within five miles.
of course its all well and good whilst the card machine works...but guess what happens when it doesn't....'cash only - card machine broken'...not great in the cashless society.
That was a reality in Ackworth about 5 years ago. Some kind soul pinched the telephone cable so the entire village was cut off from the outside world. No card payments and we had to import cash from outside as the cash machines didn't work without the phone.
Took just over a week to mend the cables.
Technology - great when it works ......
Don't like those new plastic notes, they're more difficult to count (they don't stay still) and don't smell so much of cocaine....
Cash won't be dying out any time soon. It's still the most convenient way of paying for low value transactions.
Can't believe duggimon never, ever uses cash. Try buying a supermarket trolley by card. Resolve never to use notes and coins and you just make your life harder.
Certainly around here some people believe they are buying them , its just a shame they do not hold on to them longer rather than parking them in the Water of Leith.
