Six years after de-monetizing high-value currencies to stamp out circulating black money and curb the growth of the parallel economy, anecdotal evidence shows people are still paying or accepting black money in real estate transactions, a survey found.
“People are still selling and buying products such as hardware, paint and many other household and office supplies and also providing services without proper receipts,” according to the survey by LocalCircles, a community social media platform. Notably, 44 percent of respondents who bought a property in the last 7 years say they had to pay for a portion in cash.
Real estate transactions emerged as the most important area of cash usage from a value-per-transaction perspective in the 2021 survey. “Responses showed that 8 percent of the 11,499 responses to the request had paid more than 50 percent in cash. Of the remainder, a whopping 35 percent refused to disclose this, 21 percent said they did not pay cash during the transaction, 15 percent had paid between 30 and 50 percent of the transaction in cash, 13 percent had 10 to 30 percent cash and the the remaining 8 percent had paid up to 10 percent of the value in cash,” the survey reads.
The situation appears to have improved compared to the November 2021 survey, when 70 percent of respondents admitted paying cash as part of the transaction for properties purchased in the last 7 years. An encouraging sign is that compared to 16 percent who said they paid more than half the amount in cash in 2021, the new survey shows the percentage of such cases has fallen to 8 percent in the new survey.
However, the 35 percent who do not disclose also need to be factored in, and it’s safe to assume that many of these people may have paid some cash in the transactions they made but are simply uncomfortable disclosing the same thing, it said.
According to the survey, one of the other areas where people reported using cash as high in the 2021 survey was paying cash for home repairs, household staff salaries and beauty care. Respondents were asked in the 2022 survey, “In the past 12 months, what categories of services have you paid for in cash (without a receipt)?” it said.
After all, 20 percent reported salaries for domestic workers, 3 percent travel expenses (category 2), 10 percent personal services/household repairs.
Of 10,224 respondents to another question about using cash, 62 percent referred to groceries, dining out and food delivery. Specifically, there were no positive responses to the categories – buying gadgets and long-term assets or valuable items.
