Personally I feel this clampdown is well overdue and I welcome any moves the Scottish Building Federation and other organisations do to try and stamp out this unlawful behaviour.
While there are tradesman who do not require to charge VAT because their turnover is under the current £79,000 turnover threshold there are also tradesman out there who "work the system" by making sure they stay under the threshold by allowing the customer to pay for materials or by some how splitting their turnover over different registered companies.
So lets take the VAT set up a step further bringing me back round to my ultimate employer wish - if you are in business and trade then you must charge VAT, why should different companies or individuals be discriminated against just because of turnover.
"You Trade You Charge VAT" and make it a level playing field it's as simple as that.
Plus in doing this and raising extra VAT from the current under the threshold businesses then the UK Government could possibly afford to reduce the VAT level back down to 17.5% or even lower.
We need to stop the unfair differences in the tax system which discriminates against progressive companies who are penalised against other busiensses by having to pay VAT and Employers PAYE(which is a different story you don't want to get me started on again.)