Tax avoiders who hit our high street (From York Press)

Tax avoiders who hit our high street

10:32am Thursday 17th January 2013 in Letters By Reader's letter

I HOPE that come the next European elections in 2014 everyone remembers what the region’s UKIP MEP had to say before Christmas on the issue of tax avoidance by big corporations.

The region’s UKIP man saw no problem with corporate tax avoidance, not on moral grounds, nor on the fact that thousands of jobs are disappearing up and down the land in order that US corporations can get rich.

Now Jessops has joined the list of high street bankruptcies, with the sad loss of jobs in York, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Hull, Harrogate and Scarborough. It has gone because, like shops up and town the country, it could not stand up to the unfair competition from operators such as Amazon.

Corporations such as Amazon, Google, Starbucks, and many others pay almost no tax and practically no VAT so they are able to undermine the high street. How can anyone compete against organisations that can charge 20 per cent less because they pay no tax?

Next in the firing line is HMV. If they go under there will be no major outlet for DVDs and music CDs in York. After them it will be clothing retailers.

Christian Vassie, Blake Court, Wheldrake, York.