The Guardian has reported that:
Amazon is quietly rooting out many of its Chinese traders who do not hold UK VAT numbers to try to protect itself from tax evasion inquiries later this year when new HMRC powers come into force, the Guardian has learned.
The online retailer has been conducting a review of sellers' VAT compliance in the UK. It is understood to have contacted many Chinese sellers, giving them until the end of the month to provide their VAT numbers.
So here are some questions.
First, why did it take two people - indefatigable VAT campaigner Richard Allen and Neven Juretic of VATfraud.org - to make this happen?
Second, why did this only happen when Richard got Rob Marris of the Labour Treasury team on board?
And third, if Amazon knew of this risk why did they not act before now when the cost may have been £2 billion a year to the UK?
If think the first is for HMRC and the Treasury to answer, the second for David Gauke MP and the third for Amazon.
I will be happy to post replies.
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For Chinese sellers VAT is a world away, they won’t care. What can you do anyway?
btw, just noticed your VAT number isn’t on the website 🙂
I don’t have a VAT number
But that’s because I do not need one as I do not meet the criteria for registering
“The Conservatives [insert party name here] are good for business”…
…”But it never seems to be my business that benefits from their favours”
In other news, you might want to read up on last year’s online VAT fiasco for independent authors, musicians, and ‘Kitchen table’ craft businesses.
Juliet McKenna, author (and fellow-Aikidokai) was and is a prominent campaigner on this issue:
http://www.julietemckenna.com/?p=1687
Viewed from here, it looked like governments blackmailing microbusinesses into signing up to monopolist ‘platform’ companies with punitive listing fees and commissions, using the prohibitive cost of independent VAT registration as the ‘stick’.
That’s a thing to consider when you look at Amazon’s current position: paying some VAT, instead of none at all, was supposed to be the quid pro quo for being the beneficiary of a state-enforced monopoly.
Looks like they’re losing both sides of that, and my sympathy for them is almost visible under a microscope.
This illustrates to me just how lax we are on tax collecting these days. Amazon was responding to the nod and the wink from ‘business friendly’ politicians.
And when you think the good use that tax could be put to and how the Leave campaign is moaning about how much we pay to be in the EU. And then you realise that same people promoting BREXIT on that basis are the same people who turn a blind eye to under collecting tax!!
As Frank Zappa once said ‘ Absurdity is the new reality’.
I’d say.
Hi Richard,
Firstly can I say what a revelation your blog has been, just fascinating. I have spent a career tackling financial organised crime, but tax – except for organised VAT fraud – has not really featured in my work.
Reading your 10 Cs of an efficient tax regime in your fundamentals document, I wondered if VAT should simply be abolished on the basis that the total cost of all the people involved in calculating and paying it far exceeds the benefit.
Can you imagine a world without VAT? Is that world a better place?
I speculate that VAT is a neo-liberal construct for the rich to get richer and the poor to pay the price; but I simply don’t know enough about its history. Does this view have any credence?
My own website is embryonic btw so I would not look at it yet, I have not grasped the workings of WordPress yet!
Kind regards, Tristram
Thank you