Can a business refuse hard cash? 💶💰

Yes.

Legal tender has caveats and prime amongst them is that it is accepted in settlement of debt and even at that their are limits in what must be accepted.(particularly coins). You have no debt with this business and you are proposing an offer for their goods. Their goods, their terms.

The business can stipulate any payment mode it desires and refuse same too for any goods and services it offers.

I can see benefits in terms of cash handling and all that but I don't see that policy being a success.

No offence(!) but I'm guessing you're not in the full flush of youth?

My teenagers don't do cash at all.

You could have bought him a coffee or a sandwich and paid by card?

Only give cash to those begging if you're happy enough knowing it will be spent on drink/drugs.

The info that revenue in particular glean from card terminals and reconciliation to individual cards is utterly amazing. Not just on the individual businesses but on individual spending patterns and using that to highlight disparity in income v spending.

Some of the analysis work and tools available to our Revenue service are very cutting edge and honestly would but one in mind that we are approaching a point when Tax Evasion with onshore personal funds is becoming nigh on impossible without detection.

The gap between detection and overt enforcement is huge, but the number of settlements in personal tax is an indicator of how effective they are becoming.

Nope.

Legal tender goes back to the days when people had accounts with the grocer / draper / bar etc. They had your details, you agreed to the terms of the account and a credit account was set up.

If you went to pay that account at the end of the month and they refused cash, you could argue that the debt was extinguished.

Eating a meal for payment immediately after does not create an account where this applies. It is still regarded as a transaction where the assumed terms are that you will pay at the end of the meal.

So in terms of a normal everyday retail or restaurant transaction, the supplier can state their own conditions for payment. The market dictates reasonability.

You are incorrect. Revenue have access to the reconciliations of all card machines and financial transactions via card.

Revenue can also access individual held by Financial Institutions without warrant via Powers granted under TCA 1997, with additional powers for criminal investigation.

Revenue aim to use info to ensure compliance esp during audit rather than prosecute.

The level of high level info and how it's held is best compared to mobile phone and cell site meta data. It's all there held without any assigned personal ID, until such time as a Revenue Commissioner decides to take an interest. At that point huge volumes of data and financial info are available without warrant or criminal investigation.

Revenue's ability to reconcile the terminal data to individual spending, isn't a guess or a musing on my part it's from experience in a professional capacity.

The sheer volume of data processed and data available to revenue investigations unit via these methods is incredible, and they are constantly working on improving the analytical and heuristic model they use.

It's very impressive tbh.

Of course they can. Just as a business without the facility can refuse to accept cards and only accept cash.

100% most people assume large cash transactions or suspicious must be reported. The net is actually huge and more and more driven by profiling.

Just in addition to my post on TCA 1997, further powers were granted by the below SI in conjunction with TCA 1997 and the Finance act 2012.

On the subject, websites like Amazon have amazing algorithms to match your spending habits to certain products.

Say you splurge in March each year, Amazon may assume you get a bonus in that month and push ads for more expensive items. It gets even more invasive when you factor in data from Echo or other Amazon products, who track when your get up, come home from work etc.

Nope, it's a common misconception tbh. As @tdf7187 has said many would be surprised if they knew the actual granular detail Revenue have at hand without any criminal concerns or warrant.

I'm well aware of how people are paying these days. Many are using tap but not everyone is or indeed wants to.

My comment was not from the point of view of someone who doesn't realise that people like to tap, it was more from a business perspective.

As I said, I see benefits in terms of cash handling and security but from what I've seen of walk in retail, you will lose some custom with this policy plus (and I'm being realistic here) many cash handling businesses will be under declaring income. This card only business will be returning the most correct tax return in the history of the restaurant business. That's great but as a business, it's difficult if not on a level playing field with the shop next door.