Rishi Sunak considers online sales tax in bid to save high street

[vetran]

This is so dumb.

So they think if a product online becomes more expensive, people will leave home and go to their high street to buy it instead.

How much expensive it must be for someone to trade the comfort of their own home into standing in a queue for ages and then talking to useless staff and then carrying the product home hoping it is all working, because returning it will be a repeat of that.

What about people who are disabled and who rely on online shops. Do they need to carry the burden as well?

If there was a way to make high street shops viable... hmm... what could it be...? hmm...

It was obvious 20 years ago that shops were going to be in trouble. The correct path in my opinion was

1. Make shopping in Physical shops a positive experience. Use a scanner to get your body shape and an interactive dressing tool to select the right clothes and then deliver them to your house. If you don't have my size arrange for it to be delivered to my house.

2. Make Shops an event where you learn something or enjoy yourself scowling assistants are hardly a winning look. Makeup master classes, dress for success specials etc.

3. Make shops a pleasure with coffee shops etc. BHS & Debenhams had a coffee shop for decades but Starbucks & Costa have supplanted them because the coffee shops were grim 35 years ago when I worked in them through college.

4. Don't make me queue 20 minutes! Yep you Tesco & Primark.

[caffeine man]

It was obvious 20 years ago that shops were going to be in trouble. The correct path in my opinion was

1. Make shopping in Physical shops a positive experience. Use a scanner to get your body shape and an interactive dressing tool to select the right clothes and then deliver them to your house. If you don't have my size arrange for it to be delivered to my house.

2. Make Shops an event where you learn something or enjoy yourself scowling assistants are hardly a winning look. Makeup master classes, dress for success specials etc.

3. Make shops a pleasure with coffee shops etc. BHS & Debenhams had a coffee shop for decades but Starbucks & Costa have supplanted them because the coffee shops were grim 35 years ago when I worked in them through college.

4. Don't make me queue 20 minutes! Yep you Tesco & Primark.

Indeed, the only high street shops that have a chance are those that can offer an "experience" e.g dining, or a personal shopping assistant maybe, or perhaps events where fans can get together as a group.

Shops that have nothing but a shelf are not really viable in the long term.

[elsergiovolador]

4. Don't make me queue 20 minutes! Yep you Tesco & Primark.

This is another huge problem - imagine the alternative cost of all those people wasting time in the queues. That lost productivity alone I think will counteract any "benefits" of forcing people out.

[SueEllen]

4. Don't make me queue 20 minutes! Yep you Tesco & Primark.

Tesco who got rid of their online clothes presence and Primark who doesn't have one meanwhile Asda and Sainsburys doing well with online clothes sales......

[jamesbrown]

This is so dumb.

So they think if a product online becomes more expensive, people will leave home and go to their high street to buy it instead.

How much expensive it must be for someone to trade the comfort of their own home into standing in a queue for ages and then talking to useless staff and then carrying the product home hoping it is all working, because returning it will be a repeat of that.

What about people who are disabled and who rely on online shops. Do they need to carry the burden as well?

If there was a way to make high street shops viable... hmm... what could it be...? hmm...

Fook off, gricer.

[jayn200]

Tax will have to be high to influence buyer behavior and actually help high street shops. A lot higher than 2%, I didn't read the link or anything about this proposal so no idea if 2% is the value that's being proposed.

I would imagine you would need at least 10% to start influencing behavior, even higher if you want a significant shift that might actually be able to keep shops in business.

[SueEllen]

Tax will have to be high to influence buyer behavior and actually help high street shops. A lot higher than 2%, I didn't read the link or anything about this proposal so no idea if 2% is the value that's being proposed.

I would imagine you would need at least 10% to start influencing behavior, even higher if you want a significant shift that might actually be able to keep shops in business.

What does "click and collect" come under? Every store that has a physical present and sells online does this. So is this a loophole?

Also when I'm not WFH or I have loads of meetings I use local newsagents for parcel delivery. Doing this will lead to more of them going out of business.

[GigiBronz]

the only interest is to keep the old senile people happy that are too stupid to use the internet.

or the population that responds to their messages and helps the establishment prolongs it's existing.

[courtg9000]

This will not fix traditional retail,

Traditional retail has been broken since before the internet.

So many retailers have gone bust in recent years and do you want to know why?

Traditional retail dosen't give a monkeys about the customer in general and the bigger they are they higher the pile the goods with often the cheapest of prices.

After a while their suppliers cannot get credit insurance and then the whole thing starts to unravel. Retailers cannot afford to pay cash on delivery.

IF the retail store environment was more attractive to the customer more money would be spent in the store. The other reason is that stores are too expensive to operate. The two are interlinked.

This is mainly the reason why INTU have gone bust too. The cost of servicing an over complicated corporate structure is the other big one with land mortgage payments being another.

This is not about trad retail its about Rishi topping up the piggy bank.

[jayn200]

This will not fix traditional retail,

Traditional retail has been broken since before the internet.

So many retailers have gone bust in recent years and do you want to know why?

Traditional retail dosen't give a monkeys about the customer in general and the bigger they are they higher the pile the goods with often the cheapest of prices.

After a while their suppliers cannot get credit insurance and then the whole thing starts to unravel. Retailers cannot afford to pay cash on delivery.

IF the retail store environment was more attractive to the customer more money would be spent in the store. The other reason is that stores are too expensive to operate. The two are interlinked.

This is mainly the reason why INTU have gone bust too. The cost of servicing an over complicated corporate structure is the other big one with land mortgage payments being another.

This is not about trad retail its about Rishi topping up the piggy bank.

With traditional retail its very hard to be agile and adapt to declines in sales or even expected seasonality fluctuations.

You get locked into a 5 or 10 or even 20 year lease where the price is more or less tied to the expected sales/traffic at the beginning of that period of time... But the chances of that staying static over such a long period of time are basically 0 so it's such a gamble.

What can you do? Keep running it while it's profitable, extract all the cash, and go bankrupt at the first sign of trouble and abandon your lease and business. That's about all you can do. Then you start over with a new business.