Sunderland Forum and Message Boards

How do we save the high street?

This is an interesting question because the high street has been in decline for years.
Internet shopping and out of town shopping centres have strangled some city centres and coronavirus has almost killed them off.
So, what measures could be brought in to save our town centres from total closure.
Let's face it, if they are not getting enough people to buy goods and services they can't stay open and job losses are inevitable.

My first solution would be to start applying proper taxes to internet sales.

Amazon has paid only £61.7m corporation tax here in 20 years, while Marks & Spencer forked out more than that last year alone.

(Turnover £7billion).

Jeff Bezos who owns Amazon is the richest man in the world and we are just giving him money by not taxing his business properly.
Amazon is one example but there are many others that could be taxed fairly:

Starbucks, Google, eBay and Facebook also pay zero tax or only a small amount of tax in comparison to their sales in the UK.

Use Sunderland city centre as an example if you can.

You know what their excuse will be, don't you?

If you tax them higher for Internet sales they'll say they'll have to issue redundancies

Its one of those threats from billionaires that don't want to drop from their level of profit whatsoever.

Steve30000 wrote: ↑26 Aug 2020, 11:55 You know what their excuse will be, don't you?

If you tax them higher for Internet sales they'll say they'll have to issue redundancies

It's not a level playing field though and unfair to the city centre shops.

One way would be to scrap all parking charges immediately and replace them with free 2 or 3 hour parking bays. That would bring more people in the town.

I am up for the scrapping of parking charges like.

Drop the business rates or whatever it's called until they tax sales online.

Taxing online stuff might not be the answer for most people.

Stokoe wrote: ↑28 Aug 2020, 13:09 Taxing online stuff might not be the answer for most people.

The high street shops are taxed so why not the internet shops?

Nockya wrote: ↑28 Aug 2020, 16:21

Stokoe wrote: ↑28 Aug 2020, 13:09 Taxing online stuff might not be the answer for most people.

The high street shops are taxed so why not the internet shops?

When people sell to each other online.. Is that taxed?

It'll open a can of worms imo

Steve30000 wrote: ↑29 Aug 2020, 05:53
When people sell to each other online.. Is that taxed?

It'll open a can of worms imo

I'm not sure what happens online.
To be honest, people haven't a clue and just want cheap goods and services.
I think maybe there should be something in black and white which tells us what is taxed and by how much etc.