probing that is the usual way in cash business, lots of wink winks, and the profit is taken and not declared the new buyers recognise this and it explains the differences in the books and makes sense to them
I had another experience with a much larger business, turned out it was on its way down, the plant was outdated and old equipment, a lot of the clients had left, all the workers wanted cash and none declared, but the new owners battled on, luckily they had the cash to survive all the lost clients, and buy new equipment etc, but if they did not have the spare cash to survive the next 3 years they would have lost over a million and the records were good, but they did not tell the true story all business owners gloss over how good it is when selling it, and how lousy it is for tax purposes
