How an inshore bookshop in Wales went offshore to avoid tax, just like big American companies

A bookseller in the scenic town of Crickhowell, Wales is one of the leaders of an ingenious tax revolt designed to shame the Tory government into cracking down on massive tax avoiders like Google and Facebook.

The town prides itself on having no chain stores on its main street; they recently beat back a grocery chain’s application to build a supermarket, and when the historic local pub was offered for sale to a big chain, locals bought shares in a home-based company that bought the business instead, keeping management and ownership local.

Many businesses along the high street- as commercial streets in the UK are known- have been in the same families for generations. When one store owner discovered he was paying seven times the 5000 pounds Facebook paid in British taxes, he and half a dozen others hatched a cunning plan worth of Baldrick, of Blackadder fame. Only the Crickhowell business owners’ plan may work.

What did they come up with: file the same paperwork companies like Starbucks, Caffe’ Nero, and Amazon pay as “offshore” corporations located in placed like the Isle of Man. Starbucks’ arrangement- which has its UK operations domiciled in Amsterdam, lets it pay no UK tax; it has paid only 12.9 million pounds tax in the last 17 years. Of Amazon’s 5.3 billion pounds in UK sales last year, the Seattle company paid only 11.9 million pounds in tax.

The Independent reported, “Jo Carthew, who runs Crickhowell’s Black Mountain Smokery, which sells local artisan produce, with her family, said: ‘We were shocked to discover that the revenue generated by hard-working employees in these British high street chains isn’t declared. We do want to pay our taxes because we all use local schools and hospitals but we want a change of law so everyone pays their fair share.’

‘Until now, these complicated offshore tricks have only been open to big companies who can afford the lawyers’ fees. But we’ve put our heads together, and worked out a way to mimic them. It’s jolly clever.’”

“The whole point of it really it to highlight unfairness and get some kind of level playing field,” says Emma Cawfield-Walters, the owner of Book-ish Bookshop. “It’s a threat more than anything else, a threat that we hope not to have to follow through on. Why does it have to be one rule for me and my little bookshop, and another rule for Amazon who are my main competitors."

The local Conservative MP, Chris Davies has backed the business people's campaign for fairer tax collections wholeheartedly. BBC 2 television will screen a documentary on “the town that went offshore” in 2016. If the town’s “relocation” to an offshore tax haven is approved, their plans and applications will be shared with other towns wishing to see big companies pay their way.