Cash is King
Do you ever find yourself feeling unwell, and make an appointment to see your GP?
Ever been in a car crash, and been taken to hospital?
Do your children go to school?
Ever needed some financial assistance when things haven’t gone to plan in your life?
Just a few of the things that depend on “the state” to provide for us when required – things that need financing via our system of taxation. It’s a system that is far from perfect, but it tends to do the job if everyone contributes fairly. If you want the system to change, then you have the right to lobby your parliamentary representative, vote for an alternative, and campaign publicly to change things so that you don’t have to pay as much tax, & ignore those sad losers who are perhaps unable to work due to disability, or let those scroungers who flee the threat of execution in their native countries rot on the streets with their unwashed, foreign children. It’s also grossly unfair that literally millions of chav scrotes can get satellite TV, unlimited cigarettes and cider, sleep in until late afternoon, and spawn replicas of themselves at our expense, while we toil relentlessly. Just a few of the excuses I’ve heard for the avoidance of paying income tax by accepting cash payment. The underground economy is absolutely rife. It’s not as serious as tax evasion techniques employed by the top earners mind you (that’s for another day), but it rankles all the same. If we just adopted a mentality that we could ensure a fairer society by proudly paying our share of tax, and accept that there are going to be some that need help more than others, then I reckon our country could become the sort of place that would exhibit itself as a testament to fairness and equality. Which brings me to my story:
I recently had an enquiry from a private client who wanted me to shoot a £650K country pad with land. I quoted my usual fee, which was a relatively paltry £120 plus vat (£144) – a disgraceful amount when I look at it, given the level of skill, time, experience, and equipment required to bring a property into the marketplace using top notch imagery for a millionaire planning to build a new house on land purchased for close to half a million quid. This fee was met with arrogant derision, and an insistence that it was lowered to £100 cash “because, c’mon…. I’m self employed as well, and I know you won’t be paying tax or VAT son”
For some stupid reason, (and to save face for a local independent estate agent who had referred him to me), I caved in. The job took the best part of a day. I got £100 in cash, and at this point I could have done what many others do – just spent it without anybody knowing. But that’s not my style. I banked the cash, and raised an invoice for 83.33 plus vat. I set aside the tax as well, and thus made a revenue of about £67 for the day – a rate of £6.70 an hour for the whole job not including any expenses incurred. What a bloody mug.
I’m not a mobile hairdresser, or a bloke with two vans providing a removals service. I don’t lay paving, or cut grass, or build things, or paint things, or look after pets. I have personal knowledge of many “businesses” that take the cash for a slight discount (or perhaps not), but still eagerly use the services of schools/hospital visits/tax credits without a second thought, and then cite issues about scrounging immigrants or whatever as the reason why they don’t contribute. It’s simply greed facilitated by the system which largely depends on individual responsibility. My first ever real-estate client was a miserly millionaire property developer who insisted on paying cash for each job, and I accounted for every penny at my own disadvantage, and always will. No discounts for cash, and no “guvvy jobs” for anybody in the future, and if you ask then you might just get offended.
