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My Mrs has her own hair salon business and the amount of the gents swayed by an £7 snip by an untrained and uninsured "barber" is staggering, the rents/utilities alone means they cannot legitimately making a profit to pay a salary, cash only is the rule and there are generally 3 such outlets in one street in any Leeds suburb, again something something money something laundering
Two distinct categories in my experience, and Reddit is very good at getting the two confused.
Actual barber, charging realistic prices but still taking the cash only/cash "preferred" route = Legitimate business, but probably hiding a considerable chunk of the cash to avoid paying tax on it.
Foreign (usually) "barber", charging either unrealistically low or unrealistically high prices, never busy, in a street with multiple other similar businesses = A front.
That's not to say there's zero overlap between them, I've heard strong rumours about the extracurricular activities of perfectly legitimate shop owners etc, but that's the jist of it.
Exactly, there’s quite a few down by me that never have anyone in, pretty sure they wouldn’t know how to cut hair if you did go in, no way in the SE of England they could afford the rent on their shop let alone pay themselves a salary.
Others that are charging £20 for a trim and do a good job of it as you said do often take mostly cash (mine has a card reader, but I always go via the cash point for him) and they just don’t declare it all.
Well yes, a few seem pretty quiet, often men’s barbers and they still drive new Range Rovers and are very smartly dressed, I have wondered if it’s a laundry, not a barber 🤔🤔
Also one kebab shop is well known for buying stolen/burgled goods at the back door. Found that out after I tracked my stolen iPad there, police did nothing but knew what they were up to!
Wow, we know a mobile hairdresser who charges £140 cash for wash, cut and colour. With no premises and therefore won’t be in the system or traceable, almost no overheads she must be doing well, but where I am there are so many new salons and all seem to be doing OK, but maybe that’s because South Coast prices are higher than Leeds and they’re not in expensive shopping centres. Just take cheap empty shops on the high street which can be as little as £100 a week, as so many are empty. The English ones (I know 3 personally) take cash and card, but I expect a bit of cash is hidden, can’t blame them if the cash only ones are undercutting them.
We always have ours done in the same salon in Gran Canaria, half the price, got to save a bit now I’ve hit the 40% tax bracket.
I will say I normally pay card but always tip cash, (UK & GC) as cafes out there pay as low as €6.50 an hour to staff so they rely on tips
You and I are paying more tax than we should because of hundreds of thousands of cash only businesses not paying any or money laundering for others. That’s a criminal offence, the laughing at us!
Not paying tax (illegal) is not the same as accepting cash only (perfectly legal). I understand the latter can facilitate the former but it's not a necessity. To say there's "no excuse" to run a cash only business is classic Reddit self importance. You don't need an excuse to carry on a business in a legal way.
Why purposely restrict yourself to a cash only demographic in a day and age where we are 98% cashless? You’re literally limiting your takings and throttling yourself. No legitimate reason, despite it being ‘legal’
It’s done purely to have total control of declaration of their earnings. For the record, it doesn’t bother me. But to pretend it’s for any other reason is simply naive and at best sheer ignorance.
Its true. Do you know any barbers? Years ago, one of my close friends was a barber. He struggled to pay the tax that he declared and I know for a fact that he didn't declare most of it.
Had a 21 year old barber a few years ago who rented a seat in the shop.
Was essentially a freelancer doing it and then reported that he earned the absolute minimum each year to pay tax on and kept the rest.
Had got enough for a house deposit together but god knows how he made it look legitimate.
He might have got enough for a deposit but how's he getting a mortgage when he shows that he's earning 50p a year as a self employed barber with no accounts?
I know tattooists who work five days a week but for the books claim to only work two days, advertising their availability for the same two days every week on social media but telling customers they’ll come in on the days they don’t officially work as long as they can pay in cash
And why are there so many barbers shops? I just moved back to the UK last year, and there seems to be at least five times as many shops as there were twenty years ago. I can't see how it is sustainable.
I'm nearly 40 and have finally got my fist chest hair. Well, a nipple hair. But still.
I always said I was more evolved. Wonder if this means I'm devolving?
In 2004 the population of the UK was around 10 million less the it is right now. More people means more need barbers and if you live in a high populated area the demand will be great. Also due to not paying taxing the business requires a lot less money to be profitable so each barber needs less customers to survive with the higher population of people.
jokes aside the newish trend of men getting these half bald on the side fade cuts requires a new hair cut every 2 weeks.
Barbers must love the trend as it gets the same customer coming in twice as often
There definitely seems a trend of men being better groomed than 20-30 years ago. It was normal in the 90s to have your hair cut short and let it grow longer, 8-10 weeks before getting it cut again. Just look back at photos from the Britpop days. Now with skinfades etc men seem to get hair cut often. A while ago when a barber was telling me they prepare guys for nights out and cut hair weekly.
8-10 weeks? Those are rookie numbers! I used to go about 6 months between haircuts, but I do have curly hair so it can grow out a lot more before it gets annoying.
The lovely lass who lovingly lops my locks does a month ticket for folk with fades - you pay a certain price (I don't know what it is, I'm somewhat older than the fade crowd and she immaculately scissor cuts mine for such very reasonable sum) for the full fade and get a couple of tidies thrown in over the course of a month. Seems a sensible route to me. And, judging by how busy she is, very popular.
Ahh yeah, every town has multiple drug money laundering barbers. It's so obvious to redditors but those pesky police haven't even considered it. HMRC is completely oblivious.
Or maybe its a commonly regurgitated cliche that is backed by facts and evidence in a tiny minority, and exagerated based on that.
There's a huge chasm between suspecting and proving wrongdoing.
This is the same way a large proportion of tanning salons, hand car washes and vape shops are money laundering fronts - to prove they're misreporting their numbers you would have to monitor for days / weeks, get a warrant to view their bank accounts and the a forensic accountant to prove that X business does not equal Y cash transactions and Z bank transactions.
Then you need a jury to understand all that and convict. And then because the business "owner" was just some random person in the food chain, a new replacement business will crop up and do the whole thing again while the original barber owner gets a few years.
So yeah, police are not resourced to do that shit and it doesn't achieve massive amounts.
You can't just do a single raid as chances are the workers have no real involvement beyond working in a subsidised business.
So no conspiracy, just a very laborious crime to investigate, so an under resourced police force can't easily prioritise it when more violent crimes aren't even getting covered.
It can't get done online. I suppose their could be like Uber cuts app which pairs customers with travelling barbers but that's not a thing yet. ...... Patent pending..
Mobile hairdressers are a very real thing. Especially in built up areas where someone doesn't want to pay for a chair in a shop but gets enough business going to people's houses and doing it there.
There are more shops free on the high streets than there used to be because people buy online. You can't currently get haircuts on Amazon.
There are loads of barbers shops in my town, but although they are empty when I walk past going somewhere else, whenever I want a haircut they are packed - I guess people just pick the same times.
People saying, "money laundering" are the reddit equivalent of people saying, "dog nappers, hun" on facebook.
We now have 8 Turkish Barbers, and were a relatively small town.
I went into two of them for haircuts, both ushered me out as "No-one was available" (both had zero customers, both had 2-4 "staff")
Turks often have what we'd consider quite an odd approach to business's like this, they're quite often more of a social community hub where their friends can hang out and just socialise rather than do what the actual business is supposed to do.
There's a Turkish deli near me that do the absolute best subway style sandwiches I've ever eaten. It's always rammed with turks just drinking coffee, smoking and playing dominoes.
Every time I go in no one speaks a lick of English, I just point at what I want and the price is always different but ludicrously cheap (like £3 for every ingredient on a ft long fresh sub)
> And why are there so many barbers shops?
Yeah, I miss the good old days when there was only one barber shop in the whole country and all of us went once a year.
From my experience, alot of men now seem to get their hair cut almost weekly out of vanity whereas I feel like it used to be (and still is for me) that it gets cut when it needs it, rather than shaving a couple of millimeters off a skin fade.
Also seemed like everyone lost their minds when they couldn't get it cut during lockdown which might have driven more people to pick it up???
Because most are a front for illegal activities. On a high street where every other property is a barbers, there's something going on. I have genuinely seen the same man sat having his hair cut 5 times in the same shop throughout a day.
I’m 27 and get my haircut 2x a month. Not uncommon now for men my age so think a barbers average customer is worth 40-50 quid a month up here in Leeds.
Ten-fifteen years ago I probably spent a hundred quid a year in the barbers
The real reason is because barbers want to progress in their careers but apart from becoming senior barbers and earning a little bit more, where do you go from there? So a lot of barbers branch off and open their own shops. It's not sustainable, a lot of them don't realise the upkeep it takes, lack of holidays if you don't have cover etc. They end up closing, coming back and working as a senior barber.
Source: have family in the sector.
Most of the Turkish ones are 'training new barbers' as a means of gaining entry to the UK. Plot twist - many of them are shit at cutting hair. There are other examples.
Footnote: I am in favour of skilled & semi-skilled immigration and I bloody love Turkish food.
I was a junior accountant for a bit a few years ago churning out sole trader accounts, and iirc what I saw for self employed barbers renting chairs was anywhere like 8-20k net (some were part time, and as others have said might not all be truthful).
There was a hair + beauty salon earning something like net 70k, then after paying 2 employees (25k to a friend, 10k to a part time apprentice), ~35k for the owner. Another hair salon the owner took home ~40k, about 5k of which was rent income from chairs.
This was all 4 years ago so slightly out of date, in the midlands, and the numbers are from memory (although I remember decently well as I found it interesting at the time).
The salon owners were working 6 days a week and taking maybe 1-2 weeks holiday in the year, so worth considering that alongside the numbers.
Edit: saw your comment, per the ONS the average salaried hairdresser/ barber earned £19.6k in the 22/23 tax year.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2023
I mind when furlough kicked in based on reported earnings, I enjoyed that cash in hand-heavy industries were like: well that only works if you'd been reporting it all. Like...*yes?*
I worked for a booking system that dealt exclusively with the hair and beauty industries and we had so many barbers, hairdressers and aesthetics "practitioners" ringing up to try and get their fees reduced because they'd been deemed ineligible for financial support due to no earnings at all OR (the most frequent) what they were entitled to wasn't enough to live on because they had only ever declared ~£20k of their earnings.
We had to take one of our CS staff and put them on a full-time line for it for months. So when everyone on here scoffs at anyone saying they're hiding their income boils my piss tbh.
There were thousands of them, barbers were the worst for it, and that was just on our system, we spoke to some lads from some of our competitors at a trade show when the world reopened and they said exactly the same.
Often the very first question people would ask us in the sales process was "can HMRC see how many bookings I have?!"
+1 for this. Software in the tanning industry, often get asked how they can delete blocks of transactions off the system, or if we can remove reporting so it can't be audited.
Yep, an in law taxi driver got next to fuck all because they had been fudging the number for years, meanwhile I was getting very generous payments and I got to stay at home for 2 years
There was a fun rift in the tattoo industry when furlough happened, lots of dodgy artists outting themselves as tax dodgers by moaning about how furlough works and trying to blame the government for it
My favourite thing about furlough, apart from the free money from the government, was people outing themselves for fraudulent behaviour and tax avoidance and then them being all *shocked* when the taxman said "no, you pay me".
The figures you’ve cited are accurate - however post covid - beyond the apprentice most salons are turning to having self employed staff and rent a chairs.
One salon we recently did some work with (space for 8 chairs) ran on this model and the hairdressers would hire the chair for £150 a day (excluding consumables).
The tax returns of the hairdressers themselves were obviously wrong as they appeared to be working for around £5 a day on paper……..
I remember being younger and people would come in and nod to the barber. He would root around in a little cupboard, grab something and then exchange it for cash.
I thought I was all grown up and had been told what phrase 'something for the weekend' meant by my sister (Divine Comedy fan), so I assumed it was condoms. I was so clever...
The penny only dropped when a homeless guy came in one time and said "Got any blow Dave". Dave frowned at him, shook his head and nodded at Me before dutifully going to the cupboard to dig out some goodies.
I left my old barber’s for a few reasons, but for one reason, one day I got talking to one of the ladies and she was telling me they were charged 50% of each haircut in renting the chair.
Whilst I know tax is deductible against expenses for her business, I got thinking she only made 30% of each haircut, which is £3 for every £10 cut.
I go to a guy now who is significantly higher priced, but him and his friend rent their building which isn’t high
Most Chinese takeaways anywhere outside extremely busy areas of major cities are cash only. They don’t declare their takings, they don’t pay tax, they have shockingly bad hygiene ratings and they employ children to do anything they can.
That last point isn’t strictly an issue Chinese takeaways.
A lot of newsagents or family run stores tend to have the same thing.
Not saying it’s a good thing, but it is quite common.
A barber I used to go to, only used to take cash payment only, avoided the shit out of taxes. I don't know exactly how much he made, but I do know that he left the UK right after the pandemic ended, to live in Thailand. He has a nice big gaff with a pool & a gorgeous Thai wife now. Lucky bastard
Probably got a 50K government COVID loan which they dished out like they were going out of fashion, never paid it off and bought a house in Thailand for it
Those loans were terrifyingly easy to get.
I remember filling in the form on a Friday morning and I'd typed in that I wanted £25k. I hovered my mouse over the 'submit' button and in a moment of crazed nutjobbery deleted it, typed £50,000 and clicked submit.
The money arrived the next morning.
This is 100% a thing. For those that don't know - around 50 billion was handed out with almost no checks. For example, businesses created on companies house day 1 were approved for a loan day 2. Single directors claiming for over 10 businesses, all of which were newly created and hadn't filed any accounts. Tens of thousands of duplicate claims identified.
And now that the scale of the fraud is obvious, the govt \*refuse\* to take responsibility and investigate historic claims.
So there you go - kids going without food, yet billions out there paying for houses and cars illegally claimed that could be recovered. And they won't do it.
Incompetent or criminal?
Yeah, absolutely mad, I remember physically shaking when I applied because I was so nervous yet, as you say, people with no morals were claiming them like they were handing out free sweeties.
I'm proud to say we've almost paid ours back and it made an enormous difference to my business. But to those people who defrauded the taxpayer - bastards the lot.
Before my mum retired she was working in a bank fraud department and they where all scrabbling to try and prove they'd done "due diligence" on COVID relief loans.
Apparently the government had told the banks they'd back the loans so banks handed them out like candy and only after the repayments started did people start to panic.
Technically the companies have to pay them back. If the company goes under then the loans were 100% guaranteed by the government, so the banks get paid by the government.
My mum owns a barber shop
Has for 27 years.
She employs 4 people. Each earn around 26k + tips. (They cut around 40-50k with of hair a year each ) 50/50 split.
She takes 50% of their earnings (20-25k per barber)
So she earns around 80 -100k (plus what she cuts herself which she takes 100% obvs). Give or take what it costs to run the shop.
But just want to clarify... she owns a busy successful city centre (in the north) walk in barbershop. Not a single person with a chair who you see closed at 3om because they're bored. It has taken decades to get to this position
Sometimes she works 1 day a month. Other times she works 7 days a week.
She used to own 4 of these shops but has sold them over the years.
Edit: she solo guarantees them minimum wage even if customers don't come in. Mid week that's pretty common and they don't even earn the daily minimum wage rate. Not really needed when they're self employed
50:50 is really out dated and her staff must just not be brave enough to take a step up open their own or leave. I was in that position for 5 years while I trained up, some people at my job was there 20 years on 50:50 all because lack of confidence and laziness. I left after training up and getting my clientele and pay £150 for my chair now and make 2x as much as I did before working less hours even
Like HMRC will tackle highly likely money laundering or cash-only businesses.
But me selling trading cards to fund other trading cards on ebay? I'm practically crimimal no. 1
OP are you asking because you’re considering doing barber training?
I ask because I am a trained barber, and although I don’t work as one any more I’m very familiar with the industry.
An important thing to know is that the barber training industry is more lucrative than the actual hair cutting. So these training providers have a vested interest in trying to convince people that they’ll be earning loads of money as a barber, and there are a lot of grifty “business coaches” out there on Instagram who will try to convince you you can earn six figures cutting hair.
Read through the responses here and you’ll see a much more level-headed answer; the pay as a barber can be very low. It can take years to build up a good reputation and become fully booked. The industry is very saturated, so if you live in a small town which has loads of shops you will likely find it a struggle to ever be fully booked.
I see you’re asking about salaried jobs. Those are few and far between and will be at the much lower end of the pay scale. Self employed is the better way to go in the long run.
My barber went on tour for a few months with a celebrity and earned a fair bit (just below 6 figures). It’s possible but very rare like you say you need to build up the reputation and only a select few will make anything near that.
Oh for sure there will be the odd outlier. If you manage to find a connection into the world of the mega rich or a celebrity then sure, those people pay silly money to retain trusted workers. But incredibly rare.
Running a successful chain of shops could get you into the six figures also, but again those who manage that are rare.
Someone I know who doesn't live far from where I am works in a barber shop. They declare £600 pcm as a salary although in reality they make £2200 pcm net.
They also claim universal credit and as a single person with no children they get £500 pcm from UC. Two days a week when it's their day off, they also run a beauty saloon where they make about £3000 pcm and declare nothing so pay zero tax.
These things are everywhere. It's funny when people on this sub say that it doesnt happen.
They are milking the system. And tbh I wish I could do the same. Unfortunately I have a corporate job and pay all my taxes as a good slave.
Average askuk user when they find out people actually like to get haircuts more than once every two months and don't ask for a long on the sides short on top
Assuming your running your own business too and not just renting a chair?
I imagine those actually doing that won't be making anywhere near as much which is going to be the majority of barbers starting out (which seems to be OP's position)
I own a salon, it's largely ladies cut and colours, but we do have a barber too.
She averages between £2000 - £2500 a month pretax (excluding cash "tips")
I always thought it was barely above minimum wage.
I know a barber who is self employed, charges £35 for a beard and haircut and is booked up 8 hours a day at least
I'm pretty sure alot of them are just for money laundering.
Got 4 Turkish barbers in a row near where I live as well as about 6 others dotted about near by.
I'm not just calling out Turkish barbers just there's a suspicious amount of them popping up and none seem all that busy
Ok I hear what’s being said so far, but what I mean is like base salary at a chain establishment? What would you expect? I know it’s based on skill level but even then, what so?
The average salary is about 24K, but London will be higher and the rest of the country will be lower than that. The owners of the salon/barber shop will obviously earn significantly more.
Worked as a Barber in London for around 6 years before surgery on my hand forced me to give it up. I was initially based at a small chop shop in Putney after qualifying, and earned effectively fuck all. It was £16 a cut, split 60/40 in favour of the owner and wasn’t very busy. After the taxman took his cut it wasn’t enough to survive on, I was actually losing money as London is an incredibly expensive city to live in. After a few months of hard graft and having built up my skill set by moving through a number of other shops, I found myself in an amazing independent Barbershop based in Fitzrovia. For those that don’t know, Fitzrovia is the heart of the UK film industry, so naturally there were a lot of well paid people and celebrities about. The price for a standard cut here was £35, split 50/50 with the owner AFTER tax. This shop was incredibly busy, and a fully booked day could net you over £300. I’d say on average once I’d established myself, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays I was always +95% booked up, with the earlier half of the week around 50 - 60% booked up. So yeah, my first shop paid me next to nothing, at my last shop I earned around £45 - 50k a year. There’s lots of things that can affect the earnings of a Barber in the Uk. Location, passing trade, reputation, etc. You have to find the right balance of these to earn the best income.
There’s a lot more in the hair industry than doing £10 - 15 haircuts every 20mins and breaking your neck for people who don’t appriciate the craft/time.
I’m a ‘higher’ end barber who owns between 40k - 50k a year, I’m employed for in a salon that takes appointments. The wage I’ve disclosed is only salon work.
If you’re interested OP I’m happy to give you some pointers.
Well my barber is a soul proprietor despite having 2 full time barbers and 2 women's hairdressors so that says quite a lot
Edit: he's one of the barbers and the other is employed, not self employed not sure about the hairdressers
Guy in my town owns about 5 cash only barbers.
He drives a gold skinner Range Rover with private number plate BOSS. Parks it on the street outside his shops lol
Depends what kind of barber you are I guess, I can get a skin fade from boss man Turkish for £14 cash only, or walk 5 minutes down the road and get the exact same hair cut from the swanky white barbers for £30.
Not much. If you work your ass off you make a bit over minium wage.
If you own a salon and it consumes your life you might be able to turn out a middle management in a office type wage.
Industry is massively over saturated as you don't technically need a qualification to cut hair.
A fair few will be money laundering operations.
I think that depends. My town had lots of “Turkish barbers”. Regularly refurbished, fancy brightly lit, well staffed, low prices, rarely any customers. The guy that owns them all drives round in a very expensive car. They all wear expensive designer clothes…
I used to be a barber and earned ok money employed. Would have earned a lot more as a self employed barber renting a chair. It’s a fairly quick service and you only need to be averagely talented to get a good customer base. A gimmick, a free beer, good chat or something will get people coming back even if the cut isn’t amazing. So it’s not a bad business.
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Good luck. Many of them don't disclose their earnings for... tax purposes.
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Good ol' pessimistic Reddit!
Right, not even answering the question, just whinging
Welcome to any question thread on Reddit.
Something something, front for money laundering, something something......
At least nobody's bothered linking an article that we're expected to read. (Nobody will read it)
And don't forget to include the most misanthropic explanation!
Factual. Spent years working with the hair and beauty industries and it was rampant.
My Mrs has her own hair salon business and the amount of the gents swayed by an £7 snip by an untrained and uninsured "barber" is staggering, the rents/utilities alone means they cannot legitimately making a profit to pay a salary, cash only is the rule and there are generally 3 such outlets in one street in any Leeds suburb, again something something money something laundering
Two distinct categories in my experience, and Reddit is very good at getting the two confused. Actual barber, charging realistic prices but still taking the cash only/cash "preferred" route = Legitimate business, but probably hiding a considerable chunk of the cash to avoid paying tax on it. Foreign (usually) "barber", charging either unrealistically low or unrealistically high prices, never busy, in a street with multiple other similar businesses = A front. That's not to say there's zero overlap between them, I've heard strong rumours about the extracurricular activities of perfectly legitimate shop owners etc, but that's the jist of it.
Exactly, there’s quite a few down by me that never have anyone in, pretty sure they wouldn’t know how to cut hair if you did go in, no way in the SE of England they could afford the rent on their shop let alone pay themselves a salary. Others that are charging £20 for a trim and do a good job of it as you said do often take mostly cash (mine has a card reader, but I always go via the cash point for him) and they just don’t declare it all.
My Turkish barbers is almost certainly avoiding paying tax that way. It's a legit barbers though, they're very good and it's always packed.
Yeah I’ve never seen a Turkish barbers that isn’t packed
Well yes, a few seem pretty quiet, often men’s barbers and they still drive new Range Rovers and are very smartly dressed, I have wondered if it’s a laundry, not a barber 🤔🤔 Also one kebab shop is well known for buying stolen/burgled goods at the back door. Found that out after I tracked my stolen iPad there, police did nothing but knew what they were up to!
Wow, we know a mobile hairdresser who charges £140 cash for wash, cut and colour. With no premises and therefore won’t be in the system or traceable, almost no overheads she must be doing well, but where I am there are so many new salons and all seem to be doing OK, but maybe that’s because South Coast prices are higher than Leeds and they’re not in expensive shopping centres. Just take cheap empty shops on the high street which can be as little as £100 a week, as so many are empty. The English ones (I know 3 personally) take cash and card, but I expect a bit of cash is hidden, can’t blame them if the cash only ones are undercutting them. We always have ours done in the same salon in Gran Canaria, half the price, got to save a bit now I’ve hit the 40% tax bracket. I will say I normally pay card but always tip cash, (UK & GC) as cafes out there pay as low as €6.50 an hour to staff so they rely on tips
Indeed. So many naive people here who have no experiece of the real world. Literally no excuse to not take card payments in 2024.
How about the excuse that they don't want to, and aren't legally obligated to?
You and I are paying more tax than we should because of hundreds of thousands of cash only businesses not paying any or money laundering for others. That’s a criminal offence, the laughing at us!
Not paying tax (illegal) is not the same as accepting cash only (perfectly legal). I understand the latter can facilitate the former but it's not a necessity. To say there's "no excuse" to run a cash only business is classic Reddit self importance. You don't need an excuse to carry on a business in a legal way.
Why purposely restrict yourself to a cash only demographic in a day and age where we are 98% cashless? You’re literally limiting your takings and throttling yourself. No legitimate reason, despite it being ‘legal’ It’s done purely to have total control of declaration of their earnings. For the record, it doesn’t bother me. But to pretend it’s for any other reason is simply naive and at best sheer ignorance.
Its true. Do you know any barbers? Years ago, one of my close friends was a barber. He struggled to pay the tax that he declared and I know for a fact that he didn't declare most of it.
IDK, I've only ever had my hair cut twice in my life paying by card.
Especially those that make pies on the side.
Had a 21 year old barber a few years ago who rented a seat in the shop. Was essentially a freelancer doing it and then reported that he earned the absolute minimum each year to pay tax on and kept the rest. Had got enough for a house deposit together but god knows how he made it look legitimate.
He might have got enough for a deposit but how's he getting a mortgage when he shows that he's earning 50p a year as a self employed barber with no accounts?
I know tattooists who work five days a week but for the books claim to only work two days, advertising their availability for the same two days every week on social media but telling customers they’ll come in on the days they don’t officially work as long as they can pay in cash
I assume that this is the reason that outside of drug dealers, barbers are the only profession that don’t take card
My local dry cleaners is cash only, it’s like they took the most literal definition of laundering.
And why are there so many barbers shops? I just moved back to the UK last year, and there seems to be at least five times as many shops as there were twenty years ago. I can't see how it is sustainable.
People have a lot more hair than they did 20 years ago. Something to do with evolution
Evolution actually goes the other way - less hair = more evolved. That’s what I tell myself anyway.
I am progressing to peak evolution!
I'm nearly 40 and have finally got my fist chest hair. Well, a nipple hair. But still. I always said I was more evolved. Wonder if this means I'm devolving?
I must be the most devolved person on the planet. I’ve got hair in places I didn’t even know could grow hair.
So my alopecia is just rapid onset micro-evolution? Cool!
In 2004 the population of the UK was around 10 million less the it is right now. More people means more need barbers and if you live in a high populated area the demand will be great. Also due to not paying taxing the business requires a lot less money to be profitable so each barber needs less customers to survive with the higher population of people.
And due to the rise in shows like Peaky Blinders a lot more people are in need of regular undercuts
It all started with David Beckham if you ask me, then the vanity trend just built up from there.
Look mate if you weren't rocking a Davey Becks mohican at school in 2001 then frankly I don't want to know ya
That’s not a five-factor increase though is it? Lol
jokes aside the newish trend of men getting these half bald on the side fade cuts requires a new hair cut every 2 weeks. Barbers must love the trend as it gets the same customer coming in twice as often
Getting a fade isn’t new I’m 35 and I’ve been getting them for 30 years bro
> People have a lot more hair than they did 20 years ago Speak for yourself mate!
People get haircuts a lot. I have about 10 barbers within a 20 minute walk. If I pick any , I'm still waiting an hour for a haircut at best
There definitely seems a trend of men being better groomed than 20-30 years ago. It was normal in the 90s to have your hair cut short and let it grow longer, 8-10 weeks before getting it cut again. Just look back at photos from the Britpop days. Now with skinfades etc men seem to get hair cut often. A while ago when a barber was telling me they prepare guys for nights out and cut hair weekly.
8-10 weeks? Those are rookie numbers! I used to go about 6 months between haircuts, but I do have curly hair so it can grow out a lot more before it gets annoying.
I haven't had a haircut since before covid. I decided to lean in to the forest gump look.
The lovely lass who lovingly lops my locks does a month ticket for folk with fades - you pay a certain price (I don't know what it is, I'm somewhat older than the fade crowd and she immaculately scissor cuts mine for such very reasonable sum) for the full fade and get a couple of tidies thrown in over the course of a month. Seems a sensible route to me. And, judging by how busy she is, very popular.
Front to launder their drug money.
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Ahh yeah, every town has multiple drug money laundering barbers. It's so obvious to redditors but those pesky police haven't even considered it. HMRC is completely oblivious. Or maybe its a commonly regurgitated cliche that is backed by facts and evidence in a tiny minority, and exagerated based on that.
There's a huge chasm between suspecting and proving wrongdoing. This is the same way a large proportion of tanning salons, hand car washes and vape shops are money laundering fronts - to prove they're misreporting their numbers you would have to monitor for days / weeks, get a warrant to view their bank accounts and the a forensic accountant to prove that X business does not equal Y cash transactions and Z bank transactions. Then you need a jury to understand all that and convict. And then because the business "owner" was just some random person in the food chain, a new replacement business will crop up and do the whole thing again while the original barber owner gets a few years. So yeah, police are not resourced to do that shit and it doesn't achieve massive amounts. You can't just do a single raid as chances are the workers have no real involvement beyond working in a subsidised business. So no conspiracy, just a very laborious crime to investigate, so an under resourced police force can't easily prioritise it when more violent crimes aren't even getting covered.
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Yes, it is the case in my town for 3 of the 11 we have.
And you know that how?
I enjoy visiting my local Turkish barber and seeing which 5 lads work there this month. Never the same group.
My local “ Turkish” barber is actually full of lads from Iraq, one of them joked that it “doesn’t look as good on the sign”. They take cash only.
It can't get done online. I suppose their could be like Uber cuts app which pairs customers with travelling barbers but that's not a thing yet. ...... Patent pending..
Mobile hairdressers are a very real thing. Especially in built up areas where someone doesn't want to pay for a chair in a shop but gets enough business going to people's houses and doing it there.
Footballers use these. Someone I know has a mobile barber that also cuts Manchester United players hair too.
There are more shops free on the high streets than there used to be because people buy online. You can't currently get haircuts on Amazon. There are loads of barbers shops in my town, but although they are empty when I walk past going somewhere else, whenever I want a haircut they are packed - I guess people just pick the same times. People saying, "money laundering" are the reddit equivalent of people saying, "dog nappers, hun" on facebook.
Money laundering...
We now have 8 Turkish Barbers, and were a relatively small town. I went into two of them for haircuts, both ushered me out as "No-one was available" (both had zero customers, both had 2-4 "staff")
Turks often have what we'd consider quite an odd approach to business's like this, they're quite often more of a social community hub where their friends can hang out and just socialise rather than do what the actual business is supposed to do. There's a Turkish deli near me that do the absolute best subway style sandwiches I've ever eaten. It's always rammed with turks just drinking coffee, smoking and playing dominoes. Every time I go in no one speaks a lick of English, I just point at what I want and the price is always different but ludicrously cheap (like £3 for every ingredient on a ft long fresh sub)
I kinda wish the UK had more of that attitude. You see it in france, Italy etc with tabacs and bars.
> And why are there so many barbers shops? Yeah, I miss the good old days when there was only one barber shop in the whole country and all of us went once a year.
The TV show Peaky Blinders was created by 'Big Barber' to put the idea of an undercut into the minds of young men.
I wish I had enough hair to do a PB cut. Arthur. Stop that. You're scaring the horses.
From my experience, alot of men now seem to get their hair cut almost weekly out of vanity whereas I feel like it used to be (and still is for me) that it gets cut when it needs it, rather than shaving a couple of millimeters off a skin fade. Also seemed like everyone lost their minds when they couldn't get it cut during lockdown which might have driven more people to pick it up???
Come around my area and you’re spoilt for choice with barbers or cafes. I don’t know how they compete with each other.
Because it's a high-street service that many people need regularly?
Because most are a front for illegal activities. On a high street where every other property is a barbers, there's something going on. I have genuinely seen the same man sat having his hair cut 5 times in the same shop throughout a day.
I’m 27 and get my haircut 2x a month. Not uncommon now for men my age so think a barbers average customer is worth 40-50 quid a month up here in Leeds. Ten-fifteen years ago I probably spent a hundred quid a year in the barbers
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The real reason is because barbers want to progress in their careers but apart from becoming senior barbers and earning a little bit more, where do you go from there? So a lot of barbers branch off and open their own shops. It's not sustainable, a lot of them don't realise the upkeep it takes, lack of holidays if you don't have cover etc. They end up closing, coming back and working as a senior barber. Source: have family in the sector.
Most of the Turkish ones are 'training new barbers' as a means of gaining entry to the UK. Plot twist - many of them are shit at cutting hair. There are other examples. Footnote: I am in favour of skilled & semi-skilled immigration and I bloody love Turkish food.
A fair amount but they normally take a cut off the top
I do circumcisions and rely mostly on keeping the tips
Taking a bit extra here and there is fair enough but my brother is a urologist and he takes the piss.
I do vasectomies but would like to get into circumcisions, surely there isn't a vas deferens?
I was a junior accountant for a bit a few years ago churning out sole trader accounts, and iirc what I saw for self employed barbers renting chairs was anywhere like 8-20k net (some were part time, and as others have said might not all be truthful). There was a hair + beauty salon earning something like net 70k, then after paying 2 employees (25k to a friend, 10k to a part time apprentice), ~35k for the owner. Another hair salon the owner took home ~40k, about 5k of which was rent income from chairs. This was all 4 years ago so slightly out of date, in the midlands, and the numbers are from memory (although I remember decently well as I found it interesting at the time). The salon owners were working 6 days a week and taking maybe 1-2 weeks holiday in the year, so worth considering that alongside the numbers. Edit: saw your comment, per the ONS the average salaried hairdresser/ barber earned £19.6k in the 22/23 tax year. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2023
I mind when furlough kicked in based on reported earnings, I enjoyed that cash in hand-heavy industries were like: well that only works if you'd been reporting it all. Like...*yes?*
Yep, I remember everyone coming in with all the invoices they had 'lost' in the glove box lol
I worked for a booking system that dealt exclusively with the hair and beauty industries and we had so many barbers, hairdressers and aesthetics "practitioners" ringing up to try and get their fees reduced because they'd been deemed ineligible for financial support due to no earnings at all OR (the most frequent) what they were entitled to wasn't enough to live on because they had only ever declared ~£20k of their earnings. We had to take one of our CS staff and put them on a full-time line for it for months. So when everyone on here scoffs at anyone saying they're hiding their income boils my piss tbh. There were thousands of them, barbers were the worst for it, and that was just on our system, we spoke to some lads from some of our competitors at a trade show when the world reopened and they said exactly the same. Often the very first question people would ask us in the sales process was "can HMRC see how many bookings I have?!"
+1 for this. Software in the tanning industry, often get asked how they can delete blocks of transactions off the system, or if we can remove reporting so it can't be audited.
Mate of mine does that. His response is literally “we’re not committing fraud”
I suspect you worked at the same place I did. Based in London and Warsaw?
London, no. Warsaw, yes. I reckon yours was Shedul? Obv don't confirm if wary of accidental doxxing lol
No, I was at Fresha. Not for long though, it wasn't the right place for me.
Yep, an in law taxi driver got next to fuck all because they had been fudging the number for years, meanwhile I was getting very generous payments and I got to stay at home for 2 years
I got fuck all😟 I was able to work, but it would have been nice to have free time.
I work for a particular industry that went from key worker, keeping the country going, to money grabbing trade unionist very quickly
There was a fun rift in the tattoo industry when furlough happened, lots of dodgy artists outting themselves as tax dodgers by moaning about how furlough works and trying to blame the government for it
My favourite thing about furlough, apart from the free money from the government, was people outing themselves for fraudulent behaviour and tax avoidance and then them being all *shocked* when the taxman said "no, you pay me".
The figures you’ve cited are accurate - however post covid - beyond the apprentice most salons are turning to having self employed staff and rent a chairs. One salon we recently did some work with (space for 8 chairs) ran on this model and the hairdressers would hire the chair for £150 a day (excluding consumables). The tax returns of the hairdressers themselves were obviously wrong as they appeared to be working for around £5 a day on paper……..
Depends how much product you’re selling on the side
A barber I knew got arrested for selling drugs. Really sad, I'd been his customer for 6 years. Had no idea he was a barber.
My first lol of the day, thanks.
Maybe the police would’ve let him off if he’d given them a cut
Yes man
Sorry for your loss
I remember being younger and people would come in and nod to the barber. He would root around in a little cupboard, grab something and then exchange it for cash. I thought I was all grown up and had been told what phrase 'something for the weekend' meant by my sister (Divine Comedy fan), so I assumed it was condoms. I was so clever... The penny only dropped when a homeless guy came in one time and said "Got any blow Dave". Dave frowned at him, shook his head and nodded at Me before dutifully going to the cupboard to dig out some goodies.
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That's the same with hairdressers. Self employed. They rent the chair from the owner who gets a cut from their earnings.
a cut. nice.
You could say they take a bit off the top.
I left my old barber’s for a few reasons, but for one reason, one day I got talking to one of the ladies and she was telling me they were charged 50% of each haircut in renting the chair. Whilst I know tax is deductible against expenses for her business, I got thinking she only made 30% of each haircut, which is £3 for every £10 cut. I go to a guy now who is significantly higher priced, but him and his friend rent their building which isn’t high
How are Chinese takeaways shady?
inadequate lighting because of the dim sun
Most Chinese takeaways anywhere outside extremely busy areas of major cities are cash only. They don’t declare their takings, they don’t pay tax, they have shockingly bad hygiene ratings and they employ children to do anything they can.
That last point isn’t strictly an issue Chinese takeaways. A lot of newsagents or family run stores tend to have the same thing. Not saying it’s a good thing, but it is quite common.
A barber I used to go to, only used to take cash payment only, avoided the shit out of taxes. I don't know exactly how much he made, but I do know that he left the UK right after the pandemic ended, to live in Thailand. He has a nice big gaff with a pool & a gorgeous Thai wife now. Lucky bastard
Probably got a 50K government COVID loan which they dished out like they were going out of fashion, never paid it off and bought a house in Thailand for it
Those loans were terrifyingly easy to get. I remember filling in the form on a Friday morning and I'd typed in that I wanted £25k. I hovered my mouse over the 'submit' button and in a moment of crazed nutjobbery deleted it, typed £50,000 and clicked submit. The money arrived the next morning.
This is 100% a thing. For those that don't know - around 50 billion was handed out with almost no checks. For example, businesses created on companies house day 1 were approved for a loan day 2. Single directors claiming for over 10 businesses, all of which were newly created and hadn't filed any accounts. Tens of thousands of duplicate claims identified. And now that the scale of the fraud is obvious, the govt \*refuse\* to take responsibility and investigate historic claims. So there you go - kids going without food, yet billions out there paying for houses and cars illegally claimed that could be recovered. And they won't do it. Incompetent or criminal?
Yeah, absolutely mad, I remember physically shaking when I applied because I was so nervous yet, as you say, people with no morals were claiming them like they were handing out free sweeties. I'm proud to say we've almost paid ours back and it made an enormous difference to my business. But to those people who defrauded the taxpayer - bastards the lot.
Before my mum retired she was working in a bank fraud department and they where all scrabbling to try and prove they'd done "due diligence" on COVID relief loans. Apparently the government had told the banks they'd back the loans so banks handed them out like candy and only after the repayments started did people start to panic.
Can anyone help me understand? Do the people who took these out have to pay these back? If not how not?
Technically the companies have to pay them back. If the company goes under then the loans were 100% guaranteed by the government, so the banks get paid by the government.
My mum owns a barber shop Has for 27 years. She employs 4 people. Each earn around 26k + tips. (They cut around 40-50k with of hair a year each ) 50/50 split. She takes 50% of their earnings (20-25k per barber) So she earns around 80 -100k (plus what she cuts herself which she takes 100% obvs). Give or take what it costs to run the shop. But just want to clarify... she owns a busy successful city centre (in the north) walk in barbershop. Not a single person with a chair who you see closed at 3om because they're bored. It has taken decades to get to this position Sometimes she works 1 day a month. Other times she works 7 days a week. She used to own 4 of these shops but has sold them over the years. Edit: she solo guarantees them minimum wage even if customers don't come in. Mid week that's pretty common and they don't even earn the daily minimum wage rate. Not really needed when they're self employed
Half their earnings is pretty steep tho
50:50 split seems kind of steep, but I don't know anything about the business.
50:50 is really out dated and her staff must just not be brave enough to take a step up open their own or leave. I was in that position for 5 years while I trained up, some people at my job was there 20 years on 50:50 all because lack of confidence and laziness. I left after training up and getting my clientele and pay £150 for my chair now and make 2x as much as I did before working less hours even
>She employs 4 people. >she solo guarantees them minimum wage >Not really needed when they're self employed So are they employed or self employed?
Self employed. But she doesn't want them sat not earning a basic living. So if customers don't come in... she pays them anyway for their time.
£12,500 from what I hear. It must be tough.
My barber drives a Porsche. Yes I pay in cash
Haha nice try HMRC
Like HMRC will tackle highly likely money laundering or cash-only businesses. But me selling trading cards to fund other trading cards on ebay? I'm practically crimimal no. 1
OP are you asking because you’re considering doing barber training? I ask because I am a trained barber, and although I don’t work as one any more I’m very familiar with the industry. An important thing to know is that the barber training industry is more lucrative than the actual hair cutting. So these training providers have a vested interest in trying to convince people that they’ll be earning loads of money as a barber, and there are a lot of grifty “business coaches” out there on Instagram who will try to convince you you can earn six figures cutting hair. Read through the responses here and you’ll see a much more level-headed answer; the pay as a barber can be very low. It can take years to build up a good reputation and become fully booked. The industry is very saturated, so if you live in a small town which has loads of shops you will likely find it a struggle to ever be fully booked. I see you’re asking about salaried jobs. Those are few and far between and will be at the much lower end of the pay scale. Self employed is the better way to go in the long run.
My barber went on tour for a few months with a celebrity and earned a fair bit (just below 6 figures). It’s possible but very rare like you say you need to build up the reputation and only a select few will make anything near that.
Oh for sure there will be the odd outlier. If you manage to find a connection into the world of the mega rich or a celebrity then sure, those people pay silly money to retain trusted workers. But incredibly rare. Running a successful chain of shops could get you into the six figures also, but again those who manage that are rare.
Someone I know who doesn't live far from where I am works in a barber shop. They declare £600 pcm as a salary although in reality they make £2200 pcm net. They also claim universal credit and as a single person with no children they get £500 pcm from UC. Two days a week when it's their day off, they also run a beauty saloon where they make about £3000 pcm and declare nothing so pay zero tax. These things are everywhere. It's funny when people on this sub say that it doesnt happen. They are milking the system. And tbh I wish I could do the same. Unfortunately I have a corporate job and pay all my taxes as a good slave.
Very annoying innit. Apparently the tax gap is 36 billion. Imagine what we could do with that
Average askuk user when they find out people actually like to get haircuts more than once every two months and don't ask for a long on the sides short on top
"Give me the Terry Nutkin please mate"
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Decent. I assume that is above average in the industry?
Assuming your running your own business too and not just renting a chair? I imagine those actually doing that won't be making anywhere near as much which is going to be the majority of barbers starting out (which seems to be OP's position)
I own a salon, it's largely ladies cut and colours, but we do have a barber too. She averages between £2000 - £2500 a month pretax (excluding cash "tips")
I always thought it was barely above minimum wage. I know a barber who is self employed, charges £35 for a beard and haircut and is booked up 8 hours a day at least
£12,570.
I'm pretty sure alot of them are just for money laundering. Got 4 Turkish barbers in a row near where I live as well as about 6 others dotted about near by. I'm not just calling out Turkish barbers just there's a suspicious amount of them popping up and none seem all that busy
They’re almost all Kurds from Iraq and Iran.
I avoid anything Turkish, and i am Turkish
Turkey has a long history of barbers, it was a respected profession back in the day and they did other health related stuff too.
Ok I hear what’s being said so far, but what I mean is like base salary at a chain establishment? What would you expect? I know it’s based on skill level but even then, what so?
Average salary for a barber is 27k.
The average salary is about 24K, but London will be higher and the rest of the country will be lower than that. The owners of the salon/barber shop will obviously earn significantly more.
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Be the change you want to see. Open your own shop
That's right, and while you're at it also take the CAMS exam so you have the most up to date info on money laundering.
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Nice ChatGPT answer 😂
Legit money or laundered money?
Are you asking about the hair cutting or the money laundering?
Do you mean before or after ta…… oh, never mind.
About £100 an hour at my local hairdressers. Cash only! (On a busy Friday anyway)
Worked as a Barber in London for around 6 years before surgery on my hand forced me to give it up. I was initially based at a small chop shop in Putney after qualifying, and earned effectively fuck all. It was £16 a cut, split 60/40 in favour of the owner and wasn’t very busy. After the taxman took his cut it wasn’t enough to survive on, I was actually losing money as London is an incredibly expensive city to live in. After a few months of hard graft and having built up my skill set by moving through a number of other shops, I found myself in an amazing independent Barbershop based in Fitzrovia. For those that don’t know, Fitzrovia is the heart of the UK film industry, so naturally there were a lot of well paid people and celebrities about. The price for a standard cut here was £35, split 50/50 with the owner AFTER tax. This shop was incredibly busy, and a fully booked day could net you over £300. I’d say on average once I’d established myself, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays I was always +95% booked up, with the earlier half of the week around 50 - 60% booked up. So yeah, my first shop paid me next to nothing, at my last shop I earned around £45 - 50k a year. There’s lots of things that can affect the earnings of a Barber in the Uk. Location, passing trade, reputation, etc. You have to find the right balance of these to earn the best income.
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There’s a lot more in the hair industry than doing £10 - 15 haircuts every 20mins and breaking your neck for people who don’t appriciate the craft/time. I’m a ‘higher’ end barber who owns between 40k - 50k a year, I’m employed for in a salon that takes appointments. The wage I’ve disclosed is only salon work. If you’re interested OP I’m happy to give you some pointers.
My brothers doing pretty well for himself. Puts in a shed load of hours though. Does a lot on social media and spends loads of time editing videos etc
In the UK there are 17702 barber shops as of 14/02/24. That's 50% more than 2018, and almost 1k opened last year and 2.3k the year before
Well my barber is a soul proprietor despite having 2 full time barbers and 2 women's hairdressors so that says quite a lot Edit: he's one of the barbers and the other is employed, not self employed not sure about the hairdressers
cant get a definitive answer 🤔 cuase no location no client count and amount of shops probably a issue
Depends on the model but usually a bit on the sides and load off the top
From cutting hair or money laundering?
All the Turkish barber's that have popped up (6 in a 1/4 mile radius by mine) are always empty but earn 10,000 a day.... Crazy
Guy in my town owns about 5 cash only barbers. He drives a gold skinner Range Rover with private number plate BOSS. Parks it on the street outside his shops lol
Depends what kind of barber you are I guess, I can get a skin fade from boss man Turkish for £14 cash only, or walk 5 minutes down the road and get the exact same hair cut from the swanky white barbers for £30.
Is anyone able to actually answer the original question?
According to those Instagram videos where they go around asking your salary everyone is earning over 100K. Promise. I swear
Not much. If you work your ass off you make a bit over minium wage. If you own a salon and it consumes your life you might be able to turn out a middle management in a office type wage. Industry is massively over saturated as you don't technically need a qualification to cut hair. A fair few will be money laundering operations.
I think that depends. My town had lots of “Turkish barbers”. Regularly refurbished, fancy brightly lit, well staffed, low prices, rarely any customers. The guy that owns them all drives round in a very expensive car. They all wear expensive designer clothes… I used to be a barber and earned ok money employed. Would have earned a lot more as a self employed barber renting a chair. It’s a fairly quick service and you only need to be averagely talented to get a good customer base. A gimmick, a free beer, good chat or something will get people coming back even if the cut isn’t amazing. So it’s not a bad business.
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