Commercial Property Advisors (CPA) welcomes the early action of the French government, in levying a digital sales tax, pointing the way for its fellow Europeans.
The French rate of 3% of turnover is more robust than the UK's rate of 2%, and if the tax were needed before the coronavirus lockdown, to preserve traditional bricks and mortar retailing, it is critically important, now.
CPA wonders how many UK shoppers have simply lost the habit of venturing outside their homes to shop, and whether, without an unprecedented stimulus the high street can ever recover.
It goes without saying that revenue from a digital sales tax must be squarely directed at innovative schemes to bring back post-Covid shoppers to physically refreshed stores, which must benefit from government largesse in the same way as other businesses considered vital to the nation's economic future.
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