I live in a southern EU country, and that's very rare here, in my experience. The only cases I can think of in the last decade were home repair people. Even car mechanics stopped doing that.

This article is about how evading tax is not very rare in places like Greece.

When under the table payments are the norm obviously no one would give you an incentive.

I would agree with you in a place where everything is cleared in books, like the stereotypical northern Europe.