Mrs U’s new shower room has meant weeks of misery and strained our marriage. But the real problem is: do I pay the builders in cash?

THE secret of a longlasting marriage? Never tell your wife: ‘I told you so.’ For that reason, I will not remind Mrs U how I warned her months ago that her elaborate home-improvement plans would subject us to weeks of out-and-out misery.

Sure enough, the work of enlarging the kitchen and converting the smallest bedroom upstairs into a shower-room still grinds on, more than eight weeks into a project that was meant to take six.

As I write, the house is still barely habitable, with furniture, pots and pans stacked up in the living room, dust everywhere, nowhere to sit in comfort and hardly a moment’s peace — for us, or our long- suffering neighbours — from banging, clanking, drilling and problems, problems, problems.

Mind you, I’m not blaming the builders, plumbers, tilers, decorators and electricians who’ve taken the place over since the middle of May. It’s not their fault the bathroom shop failed to deliver crucial parts of the units we ordered for upstairs, or that the tiles we bought over the internet took so long to arrive that I cancelled the order and found others elsewhere — which turned out to be not quite the colour Mrs U had in mind.

Agonising

Nor can I explain how the shower-room came to be painted a virulent shade of peach, after the wife I’ve managed to keep for 37 years (though perhaps for not much longer) specifically asked for something called Vanilla Mist.

Apparently, the mix-up was all my fault — although I swear I passed on her instructions as commanded.

Ah, well, progress is at last being made. The downstairs loo has been demolished (how I miss it!), in accordance with Mrs U’s expansionist policy for the kitchen.

Meanwhile, the shower-room is at last taking shape — though it’s still bright peach (which is how I mean it to stay, so as to avoid further delays). All being well, by this time next week we should have the house to ourselves again, for the first time in what seems like an eternity.

So it is that I’m now bracing myself for the final challenge — the agonising moral dilemma most of us who’ve had dealings with builders have faced at one time or another. As the finishing touches are made, and the final bills come in, will I be offered a discount for paying in cash — and, if so, what will I say?

If the author of this week’s report on the gig economy gets his way, the time is fast approaching when none of us will have to face such a tricky question again. But more of the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices in a moment.

First, let me recount an experience some years ago when I was given a £650 quote for work I wanted done on the house. It was only after I’d agreed to the price that the decorator added: ‘That’ll be £650 plus VAT, of course. Or else we could say a straight £650 for cash.’

If only he’d put the proposal slightly differently, without making it so clear that his plan was to evade tax, I might have felt able to accept the discount. Indeed, I confess that I’ve paid cash in the past, with only a minor pang of Catholic guilt from my flexible conscience.

After all, aren’t there perfectly innocent reasons why a tradesman should ask for cash — not always probable, perhaps, but not out of the question either?

For one thing, he may not have a bank account. For another, cheques take time to clear and he may need the money immediately to buy materials.

Then there’s always the possibility that his firm has a turnover of less than £85,000, and is therefore exempt from charging VAT. Or he may just find cash more convenient, sparing him the trouble of paying in a cheque.

Of course, no such excuses may apply. But it’s surely none of my business to pry into his tax affairs or any private reasons he may have for preferring cash. And if he’s intent on illegally depriving the taxman of his 20 per cent, the crime is surely his, not mine.

Suspicious

I have another reason, too, for thinking that paying in cash, with no questions asked, comes pretty low down the scale of moral turpitude.

Yes, I know that somehow the state has to pay off its horrendous £1.8 trillion debt. But it still beats me why the Treasury should feel entitled to another hefty chunk of my already heavily taxed income every time Mrs U gets the urge to tart up the family residence.

Nor can I see any rhyme or reason why a firm turning over £85,001 a year should be obliged by law to charge all its customers 20 per cent more than another whose turnover is £84,999.

It’s an iniquitous tax. So even if we’re strongly suspicious of a tradesman’s motives for preferring cash, why should we go out of our way to pay more by card or cheque, just to avoid the unspoken possibility of doing HMRC out of its pound of flesh? After all, the taxman would only spend his cut on such things as £200,000 bonuses for the civil servants at the Department for International Development, as a reward for frittering away £13 billion a year of our money — and counting — on overseas aid.

Such have been my thoughts in the past, anyway, as I’ve cheerfully handed over banknotes to window cleaners, plumbers and odd-job men and women.

But when years ago that decorator spelt out that he was planning to defraud HMRC, even my less-than-imperious conscience wouldn’t allow me to collude with him.

Not only would I have been a knowing accessory to the crime of tax evasion. The fact is, I frequently write articles lambasting tax- dodging tycoons and multinational companies such as Google and Amazon. As I told him, somewhat piously perhaps, I just couldn’t live with myself if I knowingly abetted a similar offence, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Hypocrisy

His answer sticks in my mind to this day. Flashing me a broad grin, he said: ‘You’re quite right. We can’t have doublestandards, can we?’

In other words, tax evasion may be tickety-boo, but hypocrisy is beyond the pale. I’ve long thought this an interesting moral philosophy, well worthy of debate by greater minds than mine.

But back to this week’s report by Matthew Taylor, the former head of Tony Blair’s policy unit at Number 10. In it, he argues that the Government should strive to kill off the cash-in-hand economy — and the £6 billion-a-year tax evasion that goes with it.

To achieve this, he says, ministers should license more high-tech payment platforms such as PayPal that herald the cashless society and may one day do away with notes and coins altogether.

I must say the idea gives me the creeps. For if it is put into effect, how long will it be before the taxman has the electronic means to track every financial transaction we make, while automatically helping himself to as much as he deems fit, whether we owe it or not?

Meanwhile, how much less interesting life would be if we were robbed of the choice between right and wrong. As for the dilemma that may or may not face me next week, I’ve made my decision.

Call me a moral relativist, but while I don’t mind paying a few quid in cash for small jobs, I’d feel like a real criminal if I withdrew thousands of pounds in notes to avoid paying the hundreds I’ll owe in VAT for Mrs U’s home improvements. So, yes, I’ll pay the ruddy tax.

Don’t tell my builders (who, incidentally, seem as honest as the day is long), but the truth is that after eight weeks of living on a bomb site, I’d pay almost anything just to have our house back to call our own.