Yes, one of the accounting bodies started warning a few years ago about the proliferation of barber shops being a front for money laundering.

The only way I can think to police it, would be for tax inspectors to stand outside and count the customers!

In fact that's exactly what large enforcement operations against these do, the problem is that they just close down, the person who they were registered to disappears(if they ever existed at all) and another shop opens in the same place registered to someone else. It's a game of whack a mole.

It's just stupid that councils have no problem arguing that say, Clarkson(sorry, stupid example) can't open a pub in a town with no other pub or other employment opportunities, but 17th vape shop on the same street is fair game and free market.

Pubs are regulated by a limited amount of alcohol licenses, which goes back centuries. Do you really want there to be licenses for other industries as well?

That's not what I said nor implied.

It's not about licences - councils can absolutely decide if a business can or can not operate in any area already, regardless of licence requirements.

> Do you really want there to be licenses for other industries as well?

Yes. I'm surprised that business licenses aren't already a thing.

I expect a competent government to issue licenses to barbers based off them proving hygiene standards, trained staff with college diplomas in hair-dressing, number of employees, and an extremely limited number of these to be issued based off local need calculated from population by census.

I expect local government to issue similar licenses for all other industries, who should prove their competency, adherence to standards, jobs created, and cater to local needs.

I think the real problem is that if we got rid of money laundering the budget would be even more screwed.