Page 1 of Jersey to pull plug on VAT free media?

I heard an article on Radio 5 this morning when a Jersey trade minister bod was interviewed and the gist of it was that Jersey is getting hacked off with the big boys muscling in recruiting dozens of envelpoe stuffers and taking the island downmarket.

Perhaps the days of cheap-ish media are numbered.

Mike.

It was on radio 1 the other day. Basically companies like Tesco and amazon can offer No VAT on items over a certain price, simply by shipping from Jersey. Obviously the Govt is natked it`s missing out on those coffers, so they`ve `suggested` to the Jersey Govt that they might like to think about doing something about it. And of course, the Jersey govt had such good trade links with the good old U of K that they are, indeed, doing something about it.

One of the reasons they`ve given is that companies such as amazon ship everything out of huge, ugly warehouses, which it would appear isn`t the kind of company they want clogging up their green and pleasant land.

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Been nowhere
Done Nothing
Stole the T-shirt


My Collection

The taxman commeth :/

Quote:
The taxman commeth
How right was George Harrison all those years ago (Revolver)

Snaps

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envelpoe stuffers and taking the island downmarket
Anybody know when a politician ever made anything look upmarket.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 29th June 2005, 01:01

This all kicked off a few weeks ago. As soon as Tesco and Asda opened operations in Jersey a big vibrating alarm went off in the treasury office, screaming `TAX ALERT! TAX ALERT!`

The Treasury office reckon they are losing 80m a year to Jersey and R1 imports which, given the exponential rise in people buying on t`internet could rise to as much as £200M in a few years.

This obviously cannot stand. Any attempt to avoid ridiculous amounts of taxation simply isnt british and the Treasury office were already looking for ways to close the loop hole. One suggested way has been to lower the tax threshold from £18 to, basically, slightly less than the price of an average dvd or cd (ie everything will be taxable).

Its basically Asda and Tesco`s fault. As soon as they got involved that was it.

When the Treasury close this loophole, the Jersey based e-tailers like Play and ChoicesDirect will no longer have the price advantage that they enjoyed. In future we`re more likely to buy DVD`s from our local supermarkets and high street stores because the savings in buying online will be negligible.

I`m sure Tesco and Asda are not too worried about closing down their operations in Jersey if they also manage to lose some of their more price aggressive competition!

And yet again it`ll be the consumer that suffers when prices edge up again along with the people working for the e-tailers who are laid off.

Another case of this Government screwing more money out of everyone.......

Perhaps this was the idea of the big boys all along - to eliminate to competition....at least we`ll still have CD-Wow in HK unless thats next on the SUPERmarkets hit list? >:(

Lets hope the Jersey government have plenty of spare jobs to give those envelope packers??? :o

M.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 29th June 2005, 14:04

The report i read (think it was on bbc news), said that any new ruling would only apply to NEW companies setting up, so the like of Play will still be able to offer dirt cheap discs.

I came back from Jersey a few weeks ago and didn`t notice many particularly big or ugly warehouses. Perhaps they`re working out of the war tunnels? ;)