The more I think about it, the more I think that there is a huge potential to remove low level tax dodging by moving away from cash.
Everyone has had the ‘discount for cash’ chats with local traders, and HMRC have a whole department who’s job is to work out what a normal amount of business is for loads of cash based businesses like barbers and window cleaners, simply because those business have often tended to under report turnover in the past.
They gave some pretty poor excuses for why cash is important. Making cashless methods better/more accessible would overcome and even improve upon cash, and it’s not like cash is going anywhere in the near future anyway.
There are legitimate reasons why I don’t like cash… but the taxman? I couldn’t care less.
HMRC have a whole department who’s job is to work out what a normal amount of business is for loads of cash based businesses like barbers and window cleaners, simply because those business have often tended to under report turnover in the past.
I’m trying really hard to feel bad here for them having to deal with a problem they manufactured to begin with… but no luck so far I’m afraid. 
Let me use the law to force you to give me a cut of your hard-earned money so I can spend it on stuff you don’t care about, need nor agree with… Oh and since a lot of people will try to dodge this I’ll have to spend some of the money trying to catch offenders… feel bad for me? Please?
Funny how the report was funded by a cash machine operator but is supposedly independent.
I wonder how that works? “Go make a report listing all the reasons cash is important, but do it independently however you want. Here’s ten grand in cash…” 
My opinion is online banking is just something people will have to learn , if the buses in London can get away with not taking cash even though it’s definitely a service used by the elderly etc regardless of the difficulties mentioned in the article people are managing so why should shops be different.
Phone and energy companies already charge for paper bills often and using digital solutions is the way forward I think
I very rarely carry cash now and try to avoid it as much as possible and use Apple Pay, bank transfers etc
Not just that…three ‘members’ involved in the Access to Cash study are…well…most likely swayed:
David Hensley - Director at Cash Services (business responsible for banknote circulation in the UK).
Lady Bloom MBE - LINK Consumer Council (you know…member of the consumer council for that MASSIVE cash machine network)
Sian Williams - Director of Financial Health Exchange (who was responsible for the implementation of improvements among, you guessed it, ATMs.)
Yet I see very few fintech/cashless advocates as the members…it would be fine if there was a mix of them but there’s one guy, Phil Kenworthy who deals with cashless payment systems and the rest are health and wellbeing in the financial sector. Where is @tom in this study!!
I have been pretty much cashless for the last 10 years. The only time I pay cash is if I do not need an invoice, or cash and carry shops. Even hand car washes these days take card payments.
My opinion is online banking is just something people will have to learn
Finally, some common sense. 
So you don’t use the roads, expect the police to protect you, the fire brigade to turn up if your place is on fire etc?
Taxation is needed for society, if everyone paid their share those without the ability to dodge it would pay less.
Only time since May that I’ve had cash on me, was for the rugby and even then they’ve started to accept card (except the Guinness van 
)
Given the bad experience I’ve had with police (I mean they were nice and all, but completely useless at actually doing what they’re supposed to do) I’m not so sure I care anymore about them to be fair. Similar story when I hear about petty crime in big cities - scum on mopeds stealing and then reselling on social media, and you tell me you can’t find them? Come on.
How about governments just provide a service (like any other business), and let customers decide to pay or not? Sure, there would be less money, but that would be good because this means it can be used (well it will need to be, otherwise they’d run out) more efficiently and on things that matter instead of stupidity like this or even the cookie law.
The best argument I heard for keeping cash was as a way to avoid government/central banks introducing and enforcing negative interest rates when they felt the need.
If cash exists, everybody stuffs it under the bed. With no cash, you can’t get it out of the bank so have to swallow what ever interest regime is imposed.
As to the likelihood, who knows? It was enough to make me pause and think about it.
Ccryptocurrencies are perfect for this use-case and will gain mass adoption if such needs arise.
I think this is fatally flawed? Customers have to pay for the Police to look into crime? Pay for a fireman to come and save their burning homes? Naturally there are things that we would rather not have our tax payments go to but that is the nature of the beast.
More like governments provide a useful service like any other business and use the profits from that to finance the necessities like police, firemen, etc?
This is just the perfect analysis of where we are currently.
If everyone went to their Banks at the same time and asked for their cash back - all hell would break loose and the economy would crash. Having cash is nice if the market demands it but we are slowly moving away from the “traditional” definition of money.
Similarly, if no one used cash we will be in a highly traceable and transparent world and we are naturally at the mercy of the banks.
We moved from Livestock/ Goods to Valuable Items to Gold to Cash - the next step (as far as I can see) is numbers on an App, however arbitrary those numbers may seem.
Like running the country, being voted in and with those votes representing the people and deciding on where the money should go and on what. (High and mighty I appreciate but that is the service the government provides).
If a government simply ran a business - what would stop another business coming in and undercutting them?
what would stop another business coming in and undercutting them?
What stops other businesses from coming in and undercutting some of the companies you use daily, like Google, Apple, etc? The fact they have great products and nobody can develop something similar for cheaper.
In any case I don’t claim operating a government as a business is the right solution; I’m not sure what is actually and that’s up for debate. But I am definitely against just forcing everyone to pay a sizeable part of their hard-earned money into a pot for a big chunk of it to be wasted by a bunch of idiots.
Undercutting may have been the wrong example. The government (through its power) has developed and established public services - yes there is a private healthcare service but there is not private Legal System/ Benefits System/ Fire Rescue Service. I can’t see what service the Government could internally privatise and sell to the public - but it is an interesting debate to be had and I can see the positives if it could work.
I suppose the level of tax will always be debateable but I think that paying into a pot allows the country as a whole to provide things for everyone and ‘prosper’ - its the human element of a capitalist society. But I can see why handing it to a bunch of idiots is a turn-off - we always seem to be able to find someone who is more idiotic than the last