“I shudder to think how many tradespeople still fiddle their taxes. Fortunately, I was not aware any of my former clients did, but of course I could not know. Maybe some did.” That is what I wrote on 18th April.
Now I have heard it again from a landscape gardener. As I said, “If he was taking cash in hand to allow me to avoid paying his VAT, he was certainly dodging tax on any cash he took, and of course deceiving his accountant as well as defrauding HMRC. That amounts to defrauding all of us as taxpayers.” And it is no different in my book from stealing money from my back pocket. We are all poorer from this practice except the petty fraudsters who do it. Should we tolerate them?
