Stop cheating the tax man with your shopping trips to America!

[Mailman]

Was reading an article in last nights paper and it was going on about Her Majesties Tax dawgs being on extra alert because of all you rich contractors going to america to do your shopping.

BUT the sh1t they come up with was gobsmacking! The moron interviewed said that because you contractors go to america to shop forces the prices of goods up in England!

Oh and then he threw in the good old "its only fair you pay your fair share of tax on your return". Never mind that you couldnt bring a farken hairy dog through because the allowance is so farken small! £175 vs £1000 if you brought stuff in from the EU.

But if someone here could spell out how exactly you cause prices to rise in England by shopping in America I would be most appreciative

Mailman

[Spacecadet]

when watching one of those airport programmes a couple of years ago i was much amused by this pikey couple who had flown to Florida, bought far too much whilst there and then couldn't afford the excess baggage charge to bring it all back. They ended up having to phone up friends in the UK to try and scrape enough cash together and still ended up dumping half if it at the airport

[expat]

But if someone here could spell out how exactly you cause prices to rise in England by shopping in America I would be most appreciative

Mailman

You're making the home market smaller. The same argument used to be made about buying a Mac in New York: that by doing so you were reducing the size of the European market and therefore making it even more expensive.

It was rempting though: at one time, for the UK price of a Mac you could get a return flight to NY, couple of nights in a midtown hotel, decent dinner on Saturday night, buy a Mac in 47th St Photo, pay NY sales tax, come back and declare it to customs and pay duty and VAT on it - and still have saved over 1000 quid!

[DeadKenny]

Or to look at it another way you are simply denying revenue the UK gov would have got if you'd bought in the UK.

I seriously doubt that by bringing goods over it makes any impact on the EU market.

What annoys me though is the fact Gordon Brown lied to us when he promised to raise the limit to £1000 and then never did

[Dundeegeorge]

You're shocked that a politician lied?

What age or you?

[DeadKenny]

Oh, I'm not shocked, just pissed

[expat]

Oh and then he threw in the good old "its only fair you pay your fair share of tax on your return".

Interesting. Why should HMG get any tax revenue from it? That assumes that VAT is not a tax on value added, but simply a tax on your money, and it is wrong to spend it in a way that does not come into the normal collection method.

i.e. all your money is belong to us.

[Mailman]

[i]in reply to expat[i]
Absolute chicken pox! You arent making any market smaller because in all likelyhood if it was so expensive here in Blighty you most likely would never have bought it in the first place.

But this wooly thinking ignores the fact you probably spent money on an English travel company to buy your plane ticket (£400-£600pp, which a large proportion of that would go back to the government via their lovely little extortion racket called taxes), most likely paid for your hotel through an english online hotel company, bought food and so on at the airport, not to mentioned paid for the right to use public transport to get out there or paid for parking (lets not even factor in the petrol you paid for in your car).

So either way, no one missed out. In fact if you think about it seems the tax man is doing quite nicely out of people travelling since they can get more out of you than if you just bought your diamond studded dog collar in your local high street.

Phew.......

Mailman

[Mailman]

Interesting. Why should HMG get any tax revenue from it? That assumes that VAT is not a tax on value added, but simply a tax on your money, and it is wrong to spend it in a way that does not come into the normal collection method.

i.e. all your money is belong to us.

HMG shouldnt get any revenue from it simply because you have already paid tax on the item in the place of purchase.

Wasnt there some case a while ago where some geezer took El Gordo to court over this very matter?

And yes, if anything the "allowance" should be raised to £1000 for every country...if not scrapped altogether.

Mailman

[Bagpuss]

Try sending anything to america without it getting hit with US tax, Earth to Mailman, they don't want free trade and never have.