Taxation should been seen as a social responsibility, used to pay for the many services that we have come to expect from the state, since if we all benefit then we must all contribute, according to our means.
When the likes of Amazon, whose revenue is about 20 billion pay taxes of only a million or two then we have a right to be highly critical of the financial laws that allow such a scandal to take place.
The Receiver of Revenue wrings the last cent from small business's and expects each business to set aside time and money to calculate and pay over the taxes of employees, (even occasional labour) becoming an unpaid arm of the Receivers recovery system.
The untold, unpaid hours of VAT calculation is another chore.
Somehow the emphasis has become skewed and whist all efforts are directed at the little guy, the big players are allowed to flaunt every single opportunity to avoid tax.
Anyway this is not the reason for writing.
I ordered, using Amazon a voltage adapter for my laptop - it arrived but the mains cord was the wrong type and so I stated the procedure for returning the goods.
The company who had used the "conduit" of the Amazon system, to sell me the adapter turned out were using an address in East London, I knew the area so I decided to call on them and swop the mains cord. The address was a private house, and the occupants denied knowing anything about the trade.
I contacted Amazon and received a postal sticker to attach to a parcel containing the adapter and cord. The address on the postal sticker was also in East Ham and so instead of posting I called. This time it was a shop but again they knew nothing of the trade through Amazon.
I contacted Amazon again. They were apologetic and offered a refund but I insisted on speaking to someone higher up the chain to ask "what sort of check do Amazon carry out on the companies they act as a conduit for. There seems to be no check and the guy from Amazon seemed surprised that I should think it the business of Amazon to seek one !!
When I posed the idea that Amazon were acting without any sense of responsibility and that they could be a conduit for all kinds of illicit / stolen goods, he acknowledged the that this could be the case but didn't feel it Amazons responsibility to vet who used their name, although he had to accept that people buying through Amazon felt they were dealing with a reputable company, meanwhile they could be trawling the depths of all kinds of dodgy organisations, including organised crime to purchase goods which could be clean, or dirty!!
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