Application of Flat FinesFlat fines are attractive for obvious reasons: cheap to administer, easy to predict, simple for an officer to apply on the spot. A second offence draws a civil penalty, and a repeat offence draws a criminal fine. Turnover is regularly used as a unit of measurement to determine application of various laws to different groups of legal entities. Read together, these cases suggest a flat fine, which by design cannot be the least burdensome option for every offender it applies to, is vulnerable on functional grounds, not merely as rhetoric. Moreover, a flat, predictable fine is far easier for a large company to treat as a routine cost of doing business than for a company with thin margins.