Another day, another tax.

[Workingman]

We shoppers have got to be stopped from behaving badly. We have to be made to get in our cars or hop on a bus and go shopping on the "High Street", it's the only way.

We cannot be allowed open access to online shopping for our own convenience without some form of punishment. Oh no siree! So that nice man, Mr Hammond, is thinking of introducing an online purchase tax paid for by us shoppers, and it will be in addition to VAT.

He has not said whether VAT will be added after the purchase tax or before. I have my suspicions.

[TheOstrich]

Well I never!

Nice to see a politician actually thinking about a measure I've been espousing since Amazon righteously declared they were paying a peanut in taxation on profits of umpty-billion. They should make me Chancellor, I'd get the pips squeaking ….

I haven't seen details, but I assume he's proposing a simple flat rate sales tax. Individual states in the USA, and many cities, impose it on all transactions, and have done so for years, but these internet behemoths circumnavigate it by declaring your purchase was made in Tuvalu or somesuch because that's where the servers are routed. The trouble with VAT is that we do like our zero-rated items and our exemptions, and the EU-wide mechanism for charging and recovering VAT on imports/exports is so labyrinthine it's impossible to administer.

I dislike Hammond passionately, but in this instance, go for it, I say. Let's preserve the High Streets - and jobs.

And at the same time, let's also cap the greedy landlords who have a stranglehold over shop rentals.

[Workingman]

Hmmm, there's a big difference between getting companies to pay fair corporate and business taxes and hitting individual shoppers with extra taxes for daring to avoid the high street!

What next, an added extra for cash payments over tap or chip and pin?

If Hammond was genuinely concerned about the high street he could give a good look at business rates and rents. They are often called out as reasons for shops failing as are the availability and cost of parking and public transport facilities. Unfortunately dealing with all of those things would involve the wonks in government getting off their backsides and actually doing something!

For an easy life it is much better for them to hit the shopper and let the cash roll in.

[cruiser2]

One easy solution for business rates which would help High Street shops is to have one simple rate of say five pounds per square foot. Just think what Amazon would have to pay on their large warehouses and out of town retail parks.
And charging business rates on ATMs is crazy. What about the free standing one. There is one near wher I live in the main street on the edge of the pavement.
This would mean the the rate charged would depend on the size only.
It would mean the Busines Rate department would be much smaller, no need for an Appeals panel and other costs
Some time ago it wa showing a shop in Rochdale was paying more than Harrods in London

[Workingman]

One easy solution for business rates which would help High Street shops is to have one simple rate of say five pounds per square foot.

Cruiser, that sounds interesting, but how is it calculated?

Take a store with an area of 30m x 50m. It has a 'footprint' of 1,500 sq/m, but if it has three floors it has 4,500 sq/m 'selling' space. The 'selling' floor space can be achieved by a small warehouse of only 75m x 60m. However, if it is only 15m high it has the equivalent of 18,000 sq/m 'selling' space with pallet stacking. Problems: you bet!

BTW I am all for levelling the playing field, but it will not happen whilst it is easier to tax the shopper.

[TheOstrich]

BTW I am all for levelling the playing field, but it will not happen whilst it is easier to tax the shopper.

Ah but, the way I look at it, you don't tax the shopper, you tax the internet seller. You tax Amazon; you collect it from Amazon, just like VAT.

Their 2017 sales in the UK were over £6.3bn. So tax them 1% that's £63m (compare with £4.6m they actually paid).

If Amazon want to hike their prices in response, that's their prerogative, but the High Street will become more competitive from a pricing point of view.

It's still your choice if you want to buy on line, convenience 'n all that. But it does help level that the playing field.

[Suff]

Trying to tax the internet sales to support the high street is stupid. Once Amazon and others took off, the high street was already dead, the head had just not realised it. The high street will evolve, eventually and main stores will move our of towns and people will only go to fixed stores when they actually need to see something or try it on.

Already I only really go to Currys/PC world in order to pick up my online purchase. Worse, I wasted a whole 2 hours making my way to a PC World shop, trying to find what I wanted, being told they didn't sell it, only to go online when I got back to the hotel and order the item I wanted, "in stock" at the very store I was told they did not sell it from.

We moved on in the 21st century and the high street became, mostly, redundant.

I'm with WM on the tax though. The structure needs to fit the situation and just hammering the shopper with VAT2.0, for online purchases, is _not_ it.

[cromwell]

Hopefully when we are out of the EU we can tax Amazon properly. At the moment they have a tax dodge going because their head office is in Luxembourg. Sell here? Then pay tax here.

Atm the last figures I saw were that Amazon have a turnover of £14 billion but only paid £14 million in tax.

The trouble with Hammond's wheeze is that I can see Amazon passing the cost of any tax rise onto their suppliers or the customer.

[Workingman]

I am certainly with Ossie and Cromwell when it comes to making the likes of Amazon pay their fair share: that is a no brainer. Where I am concerned is with Hammond's claim to be levelling the playing field. Why does it have to be done by pushing prices up for one section of shoppers? Why not look at also reducing some of the fixed costs for traditional retailers? Carrot and stick.

I am also with Suff in that I too think large parts of the high street are now obsolete. I use many of the shops as little more than showrooms where I can touch and see things, especially clothes, shoes, furnishings and the likes.

[AliasAggers]

It certainly seems that the demise of High Street shopping is another consequence of our beloved Internet,and there is not much we can do about it.
I suppose, in time, people will all get used to it.

The obvious thing to do, I suppose, is to convert present shopping buildings into flats, or other forms of living accommodation. which would provide
what is now, apparently, an urgent requirement, This would prevent the creation of new housing developments in this, our "green and pleasant land".