As I mentioned, I'm in Montreal, visiting ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rysmiel. Our original dinner plans were scuppered by transit problems, so we decided to stay in the neighborhood and get Indian food instead.
The first place we tried was only offering a buffet, which we didn't want, so we went to the other Indian place on the block. We had a very nice dinner, including chai, chicken tikka masala (mine) and lamb korma (rysmiel's, and sweeter than I usually care for, but they were pleased), papadam, excellent garlic naan, and mushroom rice. The rice and naan were notably good.
Then I went to pay the bill, and the proprietor asked how I was going to pay. I asked about credit cards, and he indicated he'd prefer cash. Well, it's a small business, and if they don't want to pay credit card fees I sympathize, so I checked that I had the cash. At that point, he indicated that if I paid cash it would be $48, and credit card would be $55, because he would neither print a bill nor collect the federal and provincial tax.
If I had realized that intent sooner, I would have handed him plastic, but I didn't feel like arguing the ethics of the situation with someone who had just fed us a very nice meal. So okay, cash, but I'm likely to be a bit more hesitant the next time a small business tells me they'd prefer cash: I am fine with not giving Visa a fraction, but those taxes are paying for services I use. (A restaurant that has a "cash only" sign for all purchases is visible to the local government in a way that this sort of small-scale tax evasion probably isn't.)
[Restaurant name redacted because it would feel wrong to identify the restaurant after cooperating with the small-scale cheating at the time.]
rysmiel. Our original dinner plans were scuppered by transit problems, so we decided to stay in the neighborhood and get Indian food instead. The first place we tried was only offering a buffet, which we didn't want, so we went to the other Indian place on the block. We had a very nice dinner, including chai, chicken tikka masala (mine) and lamb korma (rysmiel's, and sweeter than I usually care for, but they were pleased), papadam, excellent garlic naan, and mushroom rice. The rice and naan were notably good.
Then I went to pay the bill, and the proprietor asked how I was going to pay. I asked about credit cards, and he indicated he'd prefer cash. Well, it's a small business, and if they don't want to pay credit card fees I sympathize, so I checked that I had the cash. At that point, he indicated that if I paid cash it would be $48, and credit card would be $55, because he would neither print a bill nor collect the federal and provincial tax.
If I had realized that intent sooner, I would have handed him plastic, but I didn't feel like arguing the ethics of the situation with someone who had just fed us a very nice meal. So okay, cash, but I'm likely to be a bit more hesitant the next time a small business tells me they'd prefer cash: I am fine with not giving Visa a fraction, but those taxes are paying for services I use. (A restaurant that has a "cash only" sign for all purchases is visible to the local government in a way that this sort of small-scale tax evasion probably isn't.)
[Restaurant name redacted because it would feel wrong to identify the restaurant after cooperating with the small-scale cheating at the time.]