Selling online has been an alternative to the high street for a long time. Customers have become used to the convenience, and crippling business rates on bricks and mortar shops meant that online was often the only way many small businesses could get their products out. But the Government now wants to address the imbalance and regenerate the high street (or at the very least, it wants to make some easy cash). So, it is considering imposing an online sales tax (OST) in the UK which would be used to reduce the cost of business rates for bricks and mortar shops. At least, that's the theory.
Many countries already have such charges, and if you sell abroad, you will have seen sales tax and other charges added to orders when you ship. But a UK sales tax is likely to impact small online only businesses already struggling to cope with the rising costs of living, a continuing escalation in postal charges both in the UK and to overseas destinations, and rising usage fees imposed by e-Commerce stores as other costs increase. Quite literally everything is costing more and, to small business owners, the impacts are huge as they are also customers of businesses whose prices have also gone up.
The Government is still in the relatively early stages of consultation on this matter, so it's not quite panic stations just yet, but it is likely that, at some point in 2022, it will be imposed. If online purchases continue to be popular this represents a way for the Government to make money, which is supposed to offset business rates for high street retailers, but whether those costs imposed will benefit those businesses or have a worse impact for online business and their customers, remains to be seen.
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