Loading...

Tax Man Coming Again

Friday 10th of December 2010 03:10:09 PM

Buy your clothing at the local UK department store in January and be prepared to possibly pay more than the label says. Unlike online retailers selling clothing such as t-shirts, brick and mortar stores have to change each and every label in order to get the pricing correct. Online retailers can simply update their pricing programming. Why so much confusion? The tax man is coming again with a higher VAT tax restored in January. Getting labels to reflect the right price will require a concerted effort to update the labels with the new rates.

One of the problems stores face is the fact the VAT increase is coming right at the end of the holiday season. This is when stores are at their busiest. The VAT tax is going up to 20.0 percent. The last VAT rate was at 17.5 percent.

The concern now is that consumers buying everything from household goods to sweats won’t know what the final bill will be until they actually get to the register if all the retail tags are not changed to reflect the new total. Shop online and it’s possible to compute the total as you shop so there are no surprises. A spokesperson for the consumer watchdog group named ‘Witch?’ said they would like to see signs posted throughout stores to let people know ahead of time their total purchase cost may be higher than the label indicates. He said, “We would like to see stores prominently display information about any discrepancies so that customers get no nasty surprises when they get to the till.”

© Image by Keith Syvinski, www.sxc.hu/

Our Best Selling Clothing