The Amazon Tax....

jouster

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So the government are proposing a tax for online shopping to level the playing field for high street stores.

How does this make any sense. It’s nothing to do with the high street stores. It’s just another stealth tax.

What they should be doing is getting Amazon to pay the billions of tax they squirm out of.

Most high street retailers have online portals anyway so not sure how this will really level things.

First of all they encourage the building of huge “out of town” developments and now they want to punish us all for keeping our towns free from so much pollutant by not driving in on a regular basis.

You’d think the government have got nothing better to do.
 
This move is understandable after a few big high street retailers have closed large numbers of stores or even gone into receivership recently.

Hammond is thinking about introducing an online retail tax to try and help struggling high street retailers.

I see no problem with that as it will ensure online businesses will have to pay tax, which at the moment they are happy to dodge.
 
So the government are proposing a tax for online shopping to level the playing field for high street stores.

How does this make any sense. It’s nothing to do with the high street stores. It’s just another stealth tax.
What's stealthy about it?
What they should be doing is getting Amazon to pay the billions of tax they squirm out of.
Isn't that eaxctly what they're trying to do? You use the term 'squirm out of'; the correct term is 'avoid'. There's nothing illegal about what Amazon do. Anybody, company or individual, is under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to pay any more tax than they have to by law. If that turns out unfair, as I agree it seems to with Amazon, then the law is out-of-date and should be changed. It's not that easy, though, because it has complex international ramifications.
Most high street retailers have online portals anyway so not sure how this will really level things.
It will put the online marketplace more on a par with the High St, although the former will always have the advantage over costs.
First of all they encourage the building of huge “out of town” developments and now they want to punish us all for keeping our towns free from so much pollutant by not driving in on a regular basis.
TBH, I'm not sure I follow that argument
 
How does this make any sense. It’s nothing to do with the high street stores. It’s just another stealth tax.
I'm sure, IF, the government ever follow this through it will be an extremely popular move among the voting public and far from stealthy. The government will shouting about it loudly from evey rooftop in the land.
 
It’s catch 22 situation really we love our bargains but also can see the side of an even playing field.
We all rave about our bargains from amazon etc. Will they be as prolific if an extra levy is added to the sale price of online goods?
 
I don’t enjoy visiting the shops anyway so it doesn’t bother me.

We are our own worst enemy.
We don’t want the high street to close but we still buy from Amazon.

We don’t want job losses yet we still use the self checkout system in supermarkets.

What will be will be. Things just evolve.

As already mentioned, get the big companies to pay their tax, don’t chase the small business’ for doing cash work, it’s ridiculous. You’ll never catch me:laugh:
 
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some High street retailers not bothering to build a decent online presence isn’t the fault of those that have.

HoF are a perfect example. They’ve had a terrible online portal for years and that’s all of their own doing.

IMHO it won’t make people shop in towns, people will still pay the same price for the convenience of online

Most towns (my own included) need to offer more than better prices to get shoppers in.

Ridiculous parking charges, terrible public transport and a barrage of coffee and charity shops are the main reason so many people dont go to thenhigh street anymore.
 
Will there be a high street as such in 10, 20 years time? I think the retail jobs will shift to packaging/delivery to a large degree as online retail becomes the norm
 
Will there be a high street as such in 10, 20 years time? I think the retail jobs will shift to packaging/delivery to a large degree as online retail becomes the norm
High streets will be where we go to eat and socialise. Not to shop
 
High streets are already ike that. My local town had a facelift a few years ago. It consists of about 20 eateries and coffee shops etc now and a cinema/bowling alley. The only time I’d enter the ‘shopping’ area is to maybe look at something and then buy online from my phone via Amazon, fleabay or AliExpress
 
High streets will be where we go to eat and socialise. Not to shop
Currently people shop on the High St and those shops pay business rates and other taxes. If all those shops cease to exist and we all shop online, how do you think we should replace the loss in tax revenue?
 
Don’t the eateries pay business rates?

The shops will never go completely, there will just be fewer. There are already fewer. Replaced by eateries.
 
As a high street business owner we can see the decline of the town on a monthly basis, despite being a fairly affluent area shops are closing every week.
Charity shops get reduced business rates less revenue for the council. The big shops big names usually have large premises that pay a lot of rates but as these close and become empty it’s more loss of income for councils, not sure what the high street will look like in 10 years, there’s only so many coffee shops that a small town can use surely
There’s more empty shops than ever before and a rethink on rates rents etc is needed imo if we wish to see busy town areas.
 
My local town centre, Colchester, had a very long established local department store in it. The Fenwicks bought then out (giving the owners a substantial pay day I’m sure) and then spent a ton of money on the store to make it look amazing. Has it brought people to the high street, no not really. Their prices are sky high and definitely not the sort of prices that locals from an average south east town want to spend.

Conveniently enough, they’ve now got the local town council in their pocket to block an out of town shopping/entertainment development.

They spent £160k of local taxpayers money to block the development saying it was against the towns interest yet they were planning an almost identical thing themselves at another local sight.


Local councils are a joke and doing nothing to help their towns out.
 
I'm sure, IF, the government ever follow this through it will be an extremely popular move among the voting public and far from stealthy. The government will shouting about it loudly from evey rooftop in the land.
Seriously? When has a tax ever been popular? Are people really going to shout from the rooftops with glee that the products they want to buy have become more expensive?

If High Streets wish to attract more people then the way to do it is to make it a venue people want to go to, have a great variety of things to do (not just shop), make it easy to get to and cheap (or free) to park. As far as I am concerned, taxing my Blu-rays purchased from Amazon to make them the same price as store purchased HMV ones is not going to make me any more enthusiastic to run the gauntlet that is Glasgow City Centre.
 
I’m quite harsh. If you look at a lot of these companies who have gone bust, it’s easy to see why. They are simply not adapting to modern shopping. They charge more for a product over online, they stay in property with incredibly high rates.

I predicted House of Fraser would go into admin years ago. I can’t believe they have been saved. There’s nothing unique or special about them.

What the government should do is clamp down of those charging companies insanely high rents just like they should with private landlords.

Then what they should do is get councils to stop raising parking charges in towns as a cash grab which is a bigger reason th high streets is dying.
 
Actually wondering how this affects the high street stores that also have online portals.

Will they have this tax enforced or will it only affect ‘online only’ businesses.

So many of these stores do have ‘web only’ prices that you can’t get in store unless you’ve done click or collect. Another reason why people don’t shop in store because of sneaky trading tactics.
 
As far as I am concerned, taxing my Blu-rays purchased from Amazon to make them the same price as store purchased HMV ones is not going to make me any more enthusiastic to run the gauntlet that is Glasgow City Centre.
Amazon paid £1.7m tax on profits of £72.3m this year.
Last year they paid £7.4m tax on profits of ‘only’ £24.3m.

Did their Blu-ray prices change from last year, despite their higher profit & lower tax bill?
 
Are people really going to shout from the rooftops with glee that the products they want to buy have become more expensive?
No people won't be shouting but then again I didn't say that.


As far as I am concerned, taxing my Blu-rays purchased from Amazon to make them the same price as store purchased HMV ones is not going to make me any more enthusiastic to run the gauntlet that is Glasgow City Centre.
We'll all have to pay in some way and I'd rather they taxed your Blu Rays than increased my income taxes.

Don't get me I don't particularly like going out to buy things, there's more important things I like spending my time on. The only things I regularly go out shopping for are food and clothing. But companies like Amazon can operate across international borders, playing one jurisdiction against another to avoid tax and there's nothing our Government can do. Some kind of sales or transaction tax is inevitable.
 
Amazon paid £1.7m tax on profits of £72.3m this year.
Last year they paid £7.4m tax on profits of ‘only’ £24.3m.
In which case I think that the challenge is to close tax loopholes. This is a far better way than just devising a new tax designed to bully the consumer into shopping where the Government wants them to shop.
 
aawwwww, currys mad that nobody is buying their £50 1m HDMI cable.
 
Someone here made a really good point in another thread about how high street stores do not make things easy for the customer to buy from them. If you cannot decide which particular item to buy between two items that the store advertises it sells online but might not have in store. They will tend not to get the items in for you to look at unless you purchase before hand. I think the poster was referring to expensive camera lenses. But I have had the same thing with jeans and mens jackets.
There might be all sorts of reasons why they cannot get items to the store for your inspection but it does seem that customer service is very poor these days and helping the customer is low on the priority list.
I do not see that taxing online retailers will help the high Street, most will avoid the tax anyway and politicians have proved that they are reluctant to take on the big boys when it comes to tax avoidance.
 
Have I missed something. Certainly I’ve heard about certain politicians proposing changing tax laws so that they handle online commerce better. But I haven’t heard that as a tax applied to the consumer which is what this thread sounds like. Have I missed something?

What I’ve heard is that online commerce is not bad it’s just that the way the current tax laws work they can be given an unfair advantage over high street commerce.

Take Amazon vs Maplin as an example. The chances are Amazon would always win that one, more range, better prices, better stock availability. But Amazon are given the additional advantage that while Maplin have to pay corporation tax on the profits they make Amazon do not. Well they do but they use a loophole that all the things they sell to UK customers in competition with Maplin come under Luxembourg as far as corporation tax is concerned. So not only does the UK not get that tax for commerce carried out in the UK but Amazon don’t have to pay as much as Maplin. Which means they can sell for cheaper, undercutting Maplin and still make the same profit as Maplin.

Many see it as wrong that the Euopean Amazons claim all their commerce in Luxembourg when hardly any of their business is conducted their. Luxembourg encourage this behaviour by setting tax rates very low, and they can do this because they aren’t having to support any of the things that governments normally have to do with businesses like providing for the health, welfare and services for the workers. It’s not so very different from a tax haven.

That is what I though was being muttered, changing the way taxation works so that a government can tax online companies for commerce carried out in this country.

All sounds reasonable and it would get much following. However, I understand that it isn’t something that can be applied unilaterally - the UK can’t decide to do this on its own. It has to get international buy in because the tax laws are partly international. And I can see that being difficult because while plenty of countries like UK will be in favour, there will be plenty like Luxembourg who will be against the change.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
online companies have such an advantage as they only need one site to distribute from all over the country where retailers need multiple stores. im not sure how it can ever be evened up.

amazon are now the defacto online company they often arnt even the cheapest anymore its just where most people go online to shop now. they dont even sell alot of their stuff marketplace sellers do
 
online companies have such an advantage as they only need one site to distribute from all over the country where retailers need multiple stores. im not sure how it can ever be evened up.

amazon are now the defacto online company they often arnt even the cheapest anymore its just where most people go online to shop now. they dont even sell alot of their stuff marketplace sellers do

I don’t see how you can tax that though.

Years ago you could have said similar about department stores or supermarkets - they only need one store in town to sell the same stuff as many stores and so have an advantage. It’s just another way of legitimately conducting commerce.

The only thing you can reasonably question as iffy about online stores is where they declare their taxes in a country where barely any of their commerce happens.

Cheers,

Nigel
 

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