Fraud. While you may have an individual pay for $10-$500 in goods with counterfeit currency(rare), you'll definitely encounter $10-$5000 purchases with stolen card numbers. This means you not only lose the sale income, but you get charged a fee because there was a filing against you (charge-back).

Depending on your line of business, this can be as high as %0.66.

https://www.ns8.com/en/solutions/case-studies/industry-repor...

Not that much. Which is why all-cash businesses invariantly offer stuff cheaper.

I do think there's a right to privacy, and I do hope it's difficult to gather political will for taking away rights.

I mean, it's much easier for a tax inspector to simply go to the store, when it's busy, and wait for the slip up (when the clerk accepts money but does not use the register).

But in my opinion this was rare even before. And in really small operations, they don't have a register anyway. (Or take the gamble and don't use it.)

There's no reason why it shouldn't.

> I mean, it's much easier for a tax inspector to simply go to the store, when it's busy, and wait for the slip up (when the clerk accepts money but does not use the register).

Why would a lowly clerk break the law for his multi-millionaire employer? And why would a customer do business with a company that didn't provide receipts?

That's not how it works. The fraud happens further up the food chain. However, if the taxman knows exactly how much money came in from customers by monitoring the cash register, he knows how much to expect in taxes from that business.

> But in my opinion this was rare even before.

Perhaps in your country. A few years ago whistleblower protections and a reward system were enacted here. So anyone who dobs in a company that's been evading taxes gets a percentage (IIRC 10%) of the unpaid taxes subsequently recovered. Since then there's been a string of highly-publicised cases of the taxman coming down on tax evaders. They recover taxes and squeeze more out of them in penalties and fines, and the whistleblower (probably some low-paid bean counter in the company) get's a huge lump of cash for his troubles.

Anyway, as a result of these events, now the taxman monitors the tax registers of large companies that accept cash. Certain categories of commerce and small businesses are exempt.

On the topic of criminal behavior, it's also worth noting that doing business cash-only makes you a more tempting target for robbery; if you did almost all of your transactions via credit or debit cards, you'd have very little in the till for someone to steal.

Since old habits die hard, these small businesses used to under report income despite the trail of evidence left by credit card processors. So, IRS came in and imposed a rule on these processors: send us a copy of payments paid to Mr Small Business X--and that copy is called 1099-K. This is like W2, 1099-MISC, 1099-INT.

Basically, the tax man wants records from the third parties, since self-reported ones are mostly under reported.

Some processors charge merchants for this reporting services to the IRS which further drives up Merchant Services cost.

I know people who work in hospitality. Employee theft is endemic. Via both cash and card.

Back in the 90's, my parents were making a purchase with a card, and the cashier told them that the machine was down, so he had to take a copy of the card to run it later. A quick swipe of their card throughv something that impressed it on carbon paper and off they went.

Not long after, police showed up at their door informing them that said cashier's apartment had been raided and a whole stack of copies of cards had been found; for every one he made for the store he kept one for himself.

Mind you, this was before ubiquitous cell phones, internet access, and way before chips in cards for encryption. Whether a similar tactic could work now I have no idea.

Customer A has an open tab, customer B pays with cash, put B's drink on A's tab and pocket the cash.