Guernsey facilitates tax abuse of £110 million a year

Posted on May 5 2010

The BBC in Guernsey featured locally facilitated abuse of UK VAT law on its main news programme yesterday.

Campaigner Richard Allen featured heavily — and rightly so.

The feature can be heard for the next seven days here, start at 10.30.

As Richard says, it makes no sense at all that a whole industry is based on tax abuse. And he’s right.

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2 Responses

Gary Newbrook says:

May 24 2010 at 8:11 pm

The whole Jersey scam makes me mad. Very simply, I am losing money..!

I sell manufacturer own ink cartridges. “I can get those cheaper on the internet” is a common cry. When compared against mainland based retailers, my customers tend to see the error of their ways finding that I am indeed cheap and pay up!

But then there are the customers who have found the sites in the channel islands.

I was horrified to find a particular item that I was selling on my shelf for Â£12.85 is available for Â£10.90 on the web site that my customer buys his inks from. Do the maths… yes, that is the same price as I am selling it without VAT!!! How can I compete when there is a built in 17.5% discount The on-line retailer doesn’t even have to begin to be competitive. That particular customer could be worth Â£400 turnover each quarter to me on cartridges alone – not to mention the lost revenue to the public purse!

This loop hole MUST be closed. We cannot compete.

I recently had a letter from HMRC after I complained to my MP. In this letter, they stated that the VAT office are “monitoring the situation”..

I’m monitoring my P & L!

Gary,
Thame, Oxfordshire
Richard Allen says:

May 26 2010 at 1:26 am

Hi Gary, Contact me through Richard M. I’m making progress on this. I have correspondence from 1997 from HMRC specifically in relation to your industry. HMRC have been seriously negligent. Any information you can add to my files is very useful. Thanks. Regards Richard Allen