The Taylor report is wrong to suggest cash in hand is fundamentally dishonest

Would a cashless world be a better place, morally or fiscally? Matthew Taylor, in his relatively uncontroversial review of work practices and the ‘gig economy’ published on Tuesday, proposed that the £6 billion ‘cash in hand’ economy of payment for window cleaning, gardening, leaflet distributing and similar simple tasks should be regularised and brought into the tax net through the use of apps and other digital payment platforms. Would that really be a good thing?

The first point to be made is that it’s probably going to happen anyway over the next decade — at least if we go the way of Sweden. There, cards and phones are almost universally used, even for the smallest transactions. Shops prefer not to take cash and some banks don’t hold it or provide ATMs. Even donations to church collection plates are largely paid by phone, using a popular app called Swish.

But what’s striking about ‘cash in hand’ in a British context is its connotation of ‘Del Boy’ dishonesty.