Amazon Black Friday Deals: No say MPs

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Amazon Black Friday DealsAs Amazon kick off their Annual Black Friday Deals (Black Friday being being an imported event from the US), MPs are calling on UK shoppers to boycott Amazon.

The MPs include Public Accounts Committee chairman Margaret Hodge who said “It’s hugely important that we all take a stand and damage the reputation and business of companies such as Amazon that deliberately avoid paying their fare share of tax to the common purse for the common good. If enough people boycott Amazon then we will damage their business. Amazon’s market share and reputation matters”.

Frankly I think Ms Hodge is missing the point for several reasons. Firstly my first reaction was no one will listen. Whilst the general public might agree with her in principle, shoppers are going to be far busy buying from Amazon to actually care.

Secondly what about all the 3rd party retailers that sell on Amazon. We know Amazon makes profit from 3rd party sales as well as from their own retail operation, but Ms Hodge doesn’t seem to understand that whilst the entire country are boycotting Amazon they will be putting a ton of small retailers onto the dole queues.

Finally and most importantly MPs still don’t seem to get it! Companies will only change their tax policies when MPs change the country’s tax laws and probably international tax laws as well. Why don’t they focus on giving HMRC the ability to levy taxes that MPs think should be paid in the UK instead of trying to ask consumers to go and buy elsewhere at higher prices?

At the end of the day every retailer would like to put their prices up and make more profit. Equally every consumer would like to buy at the best possible price and if that’s Amazon then that’s where they’ll be heading this weekend.

Personally I’m waiting until 12.30pm when the Cel WS3 POWER8 Lithium 18V Cordless Workshop goes live…. I do hope it’s a cracking discount off the £429.90 regular price.

You can browse all upcoming Amazon Black Friday deals on the Amazon website so you know what time the bargains you want will have their prices slashed.

7 Responses

  1. Amazon UK sales £4.2B of which £700m is VAT. NI and PAYE on staff employed in UK centres = ££££££ and so on. Corporation tax of any value would be a drop in the ocean compared to this lot. MP’s are dim (but we knew that anyway).

  2. It should be the VAT and tax avoiders on ebay targeted. Loads of money there for HMRC!

    I’ll do the job for HMRC on a commission basis if they approach me. I want 50% of what I make the government in revenue otherwise lost.

  3. I think they should sometimes sit in the shoes of the many traders that make their living before saying this. I pay tax/vat but without Amazon wouldn’t be paying as much as I do. Yes, they could and probably should pay more tax but if the MP’s set out the rules, why is it their problem?

    Anyway, I picked up a couple of bargains last year with the Black Friday deals, however some of the items I want to buy this year sold out within second. Maybe more peo

  4. Only surprising thing about this is that this stupid woman didn’t complain about it being called black friday.

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