LONDON, June 23 (Reuters) – Britain will scrap customs duty relief on low-value imports from October 2028, six months earlier than \u200cplanned, the finance ministry said on Tuesday, targeting a \u200ctax loophole that benefits online retailers such as China’s Shein.<\/p>\n
UK retailers have been squeezed \u200bby rapidly growing ultra-low-cost platforms like Shein, Temu, AliExpress and more recently Amazon Haul, which send packages directly from factories in China to shoppers’ doorsteps, benefiting from a customs waiver on parcels worth up to \u00a3135 ($178).<\/p>\n
Last \u200cNovember, the UK government \u2060said it would scrap the relief, meaning goods valued at \u00a3135 or less would be subject to customs import \u2060duties.<\/p>\n
UK GOVERNMENT SAYS IT LISTENED TO INDUSTRY<\/p>\n
However, the government’s timeline of March 2029 “at the latest” was criticised by UK retailers as too slow. They \u200bsaid it \u200brisked making the UK an \u200binternational outlier.<\/p>\n
Last month, 16 major \u200cretailers, including Marks & Spencer, Next and Primark, called for urgent action.<\/p>\n
“The government has since listened to industry and chosen to accelerate delivery of the reforms by six months to October 2028,” the finance ministry said.<\/p>\n
It said the changes will ensure fairer competition between high street \u200cand online retailers.<\/p>\n
However, the British Retail Consortium, \u200bwhich represents the major UK retailers, said \u200bbringing the timetable forward \u200bby six months “does not go far enough.”<\/p>\n
“While we recognise \u200cthe practical challenges involved, we \u200bare keen to work \u200bwith Government to explore solutions that could enable the changes to be introduced sooner,” BRC CEO Helen Dickinson said.<\/p>\n
The finance \u200bministry also said it \u200cwas reviewing how Value Added Tax is collected for businesses \u200btrading through online marketplaces.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7574 pounds)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by James Davey, \u200bediting by Sam Tabahriti, Alexandra Hudson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, June 23 (Reuters) – Britain will scrap customs duty relief on low-value imports from October 2028, six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,4270,148930,56,735,54,55],"class_list":["post-655751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-finance-ministry","tag-online-retailers","tag-uk","tag-uk-government","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}