Good for Philip Hammond (11 August) for wanting to recalibrate the unfair trading conditions for businesses on the high street and those such as Amazon on the internet, and not a moment too soon.
I hope this is a viable strategy, because our beleaguered high street deserves better. The buzz of the high street is second to none if there are a diversity of shops offering a vibrant experience and not a soulless one. This unfair playing field needs levelling before any more classic names hit the buffers of tough trading conditions and big tax bills, while the internet giants cock a legal but immoral snook at the exchequer.
Judith Daniels
Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
The chancellor already has the ability to tax Amazon, and indeed all overseas bodies. It’s called VAT. It would be simple to double the VAT paid by non-UK registered companies, which would make them less competitive. The tax collected in this way, paid for by UK citizens – as are all taxes including corporation tax – could be used during the short term of its existence to reduce retail rates, although I suspect that the demise of retailing will continue.
Many of today’s retail shops were originally houses where traders worked from their front rooms. There is apparently a shortage of 300,000 homes, and 349,000 empty retail premises, QED?
Paul Frankenberg
London
The chancellor does not need temporary tax measures or international agreements to “make sure that taxation is fair between business doing business the traditional way, and those doing business online”.
If high-street retailers are closing and Amazon pays only £33m in business rates “because it operates from low-value warehouse property”, then we need a revaluation of business rates that rebalances prime locations away from the high street and towards warehouses with good transport and other communications links.
Dr Andrew Aitchison
Cambridge
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