Seen a few, spoke to a few .
I don't like it either, cash in hand mob.
There's enough work to go about but still degrades window cleaning.
Good point! Degrades our profession. Some even have signed up vans. Do they turn up to the fire station in them to do their shift? Sorry but it grinds my gears.
We have 'on call' firemen in our area. They all have other jobs. When the call goes out to say 10 firemen, the first 6 or so get onto the engine and they get paid for their attendance. Another couple may arrive late and they get nothing.
They all arrive in whatever vehicle they are using at the time. One of them uses a Landrover sign written with all his joinery details on the side.
No one can be judged whether they pay tax or not. Unfortunately there are many who do cash in hand jobs and they aren't only window cleaners. But the tax man will have computer algorithims that will identify a part time employed person paying tax who is living above his means. Those algorithims will have all sorts of parameters built in; for example, where he lives, what his mortgage is, his wife's earnings, number of children, interest paid on savings accounts, etc. The Receiver of Revenue also has a day to day weather report for the local area so they will also have an idea when certain self employed trades would work and when they won't - in other word, how many days in the tax year he would have been likely to have worked. They will also have an idea how much on average each trade will earn on a daily basis using the tax returns of all those in the same trade in that area. (This insight was courtesy of a customer who worked for the Receiver.)
If they see a small discrepency then they probably wouldn't redflag it for investigation, but it will be noted for their future referrance.