Why Hello Brolly is better for you than Starbucks & Amazon!

It's better for your budget to buy from independents than Starbucks & Amazon!

How can this be?

A  four month investigation by news agency Reuters found that Starbucks had paid absolutely no corporation tax in Britain the last three years, but told investors that it was 'profitable'.  

A Starbucks' representative stated "We have paid and will continue to pay our fair share of taxes in full compliance with all UK tax laws, as we always have." John Culver, the president of the Starbucks’ international division, boasted to analysts: ‘We are very pleased with the performance in the UK." 

What?

On the same subject, Amazon, Britain’s biggest online retailer, had sales of £3.3 billion last year, but paid no corporation tax at all!!!

This seems utterly baffling to me, and to many of the independent business owners that I know. We all, in the general population, work hard to create profits or earn wages, of which the British tax system takes a proportion. Whether you think this amount should go up or down is for another discussion, but what is important is that we all have to pay in to the system so that the UK can run vital services such as the NHS, schools or many of the things that we sometimes take for granted, like national security.

Hello Brolly (my business) is a British based business, owned by me, a British woman who pays all her due taxes, who also pays staff who live locally. Therefore everything that I earn and all that I pay out whether in wages, taxes or personal spend goes into the British coffers.

Compare this to Starbucks, a global company that doesn't seem to pay it's 'fair share' into the British tax system, because according to them, they have no profits! They also use the supply chain to move their 'potential profits' out of Britain, as the UK arm has to pay the company's own subsidiaries in Holland and Switzerland (cheaper tax systems) for buying and roasting their coffee beans.

Yes, they do employ staff who through their taxed wages pay into the system, but this is at the cost of the jobs at local independent cafés & coffee shops that are closed down due to the predatory practices of a company who can afford to trade longer at a loss to crush the opposition (how can this be for a company with NO profits?).

So how can I make the claim that independents, like Hello Brolly, are better for your budget than Starbucks? 

Well the more money that is paid into the British tax system, and kept within the country by British based businesses, means the less money the government will have to get from the individual.

This in turn means your personal taxes don't skyrocket, but the more money that is moved out of the country, or legally manoeuvred into a 'no profit' status, then the more you will have to pay out to make up the shortfall.

So please look for a British based alternative when you are thinking of spending your money, it'll benefit you in the long run.