Recent plans to reintroduce tax-free shopping for international visitors in the UK have been scrapped.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Last month, former Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng reintroduced tax-free shopping as part of his mini-Budget.<\/p>\n
However, the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, repealed this measure in his fiscal statement yesterday, confirming that the Government will no longer be progressing with the scheme.<\/p>\n
Hunt stated that \u201cnot proceeding with this scheme is worth around \u00a32 billion a year\u201d.<\/p>\n
What would the scheme have done?<\/strong><\/p>\n The tax-free scheme would have allowed overseas visitors to claim a refund on the VAT paid on items purchased in stores, at airports and other departure spots, before taking them out of the country to return home.<\/p>\n The policy was first cancelled in January 2021 as part of the Government\u2019s Brexit plan but was due to be introduced once again prior to yesterday\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n What does it mean for the retail sector?<\/strong><\/p>\n Many retailers are unhappy with the decision, having rallied for the return of the scheme for quite some time, insisting that tourists were spending their money in rival cities as a result.<\/p>\n Helen Brocklebank, CEO of the British Retail Consortium, said that the scheme would have successfully delivered growth to quicken post-pandemic recovery, as well as considerably improved UK manufacturing.<\/p>\n She continued: \u201cHaving become the only country in Europe without tax-free shopping was a significant impediment to post-pandemic recovery, risking our competitiveness, and risking stultifying a $34 billion industry.\u201d<\/p>\n Wondering how these recent changes will affect your business? Contact us for advice.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recent plans to reintroduce tax-free shopping for international visitors in the UK have been scrapped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,7,107],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4895,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4894\/revisions\/4895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}