Tax collectors are really good at estimating how much a business should be bringing in. Tax evasion by cash only businesses isn’t as rampant as many people think. Especially if the business sells things that require inventory. A cash only service business is more likely to be laundering money (and paying lots of taxes) than evading.
And as you can see in the charts, only about 1/6 of the tax gap is evasion. Accounting mistakes, interpretation, crime, etc make up much more. As for Greece, it’s difficult to use as a good example as their government is not well organized and corruption on every level is far more common.
Of course it exists but evasion isn’t the first thing I’d think of when considering a cash only business.
Well if it costs more why are we doing it in the first place? It was my understanding that online payment processing was orders of magnitude cheaper/faster/easier per transaction. Updates and infrastructure require a centralized system to maintain but in the case of tap chip cards, you basically reduce transaction time and effort to 0.
This isn't just about small mom and pops either, but huge city walmarts and grocery stores who never have a moment of downtime, the amount of productivity gain from having instant easy payment allows those business to service drastically faster and higher significantly less staff, producing what across the world is probably ridiculous profit.
I understand they cost money but how much is the question. I agree some kind of fee system but a dollar + some percent on every transaction? Looking back at my credit card history that would be an insane amount of money, thousands and thousands of dollars over the years that I've paid directly to the card processor. And they need millions of people doing that just to be able to run a complex aws system? On top of ad revenue as well? Some fees are okay but that sounds like way too much.
> Well if it costs more why are we doing it in the first place?
> Looking back at my credit card history that would be an insane amount of money, thousands and thousands of dollars over the years that I've paid directly to the card processor.
They like it because they make money off of it, businesses sometimes like it because paying extra is worth not handling cash, people like it because it's convenient and you don't need to remember to take money out of the bank.
Not a good reason to eliminate cash though. Everyone should be legally required to accept cash.
In addition, businesses that handle most transactions in cash, at least here in Canada, are notorious for tax evasion
That being said, I'm not a fan of payment data being sold to ad companies