British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne on Thursday announced a review of how retailers at major airports in Britain collect sales tax from their customers.
The investigation, which is expected to be completed by early this year, comes after several retailers were accused of not passing along savings to consumers who bought items at major hubs including Heathrow Airport near London.
Regardless of their nationalities, passengers at British airports who are flying to destinations outside the EU are exempt from paying valued-added tax (VAT), which can reach 20 percent. The measure applies not only to duty-free stores, but also to retailers as varied as Boots UK Ltd, WHSmith PLC or Dixons Retail PLC.
However, some retailers at the country’s largest airports were found by the government to have been charging the additional tax in cases they were not allowed to, and keeping it rather than passing it on to tax authorities.
As a result, some travelers have refused to provide their boarding passes at cash registers. Airport retailers use boarding passes to determine whether customers are required to pay the sales tax, and the stores cannot claim rebates without that information.
The new investigation is to look at how retailers collect the sales tax from consumers traveling in the 28-member bloc and further afield. It was unclear whether the inquiry would result in fines for retailers or refunds for shoppers.
“VAT relief at airports is intended to cut prices for those travelers, not be a windfall gain for shops,” Osborne said in a statement on Thursday, adding that some retailers had been keeping half of every pound (US$1.47) of potential tax savings owed to individuals.
“Many people could be paying over the odds for their purchases, because the government’s VAT concession isn’t passed on,” he added.
This is not the first time that the British government has warned retailers about how they collect taxes from shoppers at airports. In August last year, the British Treasury scolded retailers at British airports, saying they should reduce prices for customers who are not required to pay value-added tax.
“While many retailers do pass this saving on to customers, it is disappointing that some are choosing not to,” Treasury official David Gauke said in August. “We urge all airside retailers to use this relief for the benefit of their customers.”
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last