Worth watching on the BBC iPlayer - it's the main story, and the cross party support is significant.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Read more about me
If you like what I do please support me on Ko-fi using credit or debit card or PayPal
Tax Research UK Blog is written by Richard Murphy unless otherwise stated and published by Tax Research LLP under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Design by Andy Moyle
Buy me a coffee!
Hurrah. I did say let’s see if the coalition does anything and dare we hope that they might. We waited 13 years for Labour. I’ll believe it when I see it in the budget though.
Its not over until the fat lady charges VAT
@Richard Allen
Very true Richard. But well done on your campaign. I have been writing to customs about it since 1996.
Thanks. Its a group effort now (plenty of allies) I should have said it’s not over until the VAT lady sings….
I saw reported somewhere that they intend “making a start” in countering this scam. I wonder what that means. Hopefully not a long drawn out lowering of the £18 threshold by bits over time. It needs killing stone dead with one blow.
@woolley Yes. Any faffing at this point is inexcusable. They have had it ‘under review’ for literally years (if you believe that). The main problem is the fact that the same officials involved in it in 2005 are involved in it now. I’m sure you know the names as I’m sure you have the standard responses.
If UK stops LVCR then surely the big companies involved will just ship the low value parcels via another EU country with the equivalent (INVR) relief and then on to the UK thus avoiding the VAT anyway – the warehouses in Calais which used to have wine will now have dvds! (E.g Switzerland to france to uk; channel islands to france to uk).
This together with cost of collection / increase cost to consumer / grey imports from other countries (hong kong / asia / usa) seems to make this all a bit pointless and toothless.
@fred
a) You ignore distance selling rules
b) You ignore the fact that if collection costs are incurred the business will end overnight
@fred
No that wouldn’t work at all. You couldn’t use another EU country in that way without charging VAT to an individual not registered for VAT. This scam should have been ended 15 years ago and certainly by Labour as the losses grew. You obviously don’t give a monkey’s about businesses that are trying to compete with a 20% price disadvantage.
@fred Not only would the VAT issues not work but it was hard enough to convince UK distributors to deliver to the channel Islands (inside the UK sales territory) let alone Switzerland!(outside the UK territory and conflicting with other product licence arrangements) Also there’s a 7% import duty in Switzerland and the turnarounds are too slow.