Tax is a moral issue for businesses, and a recent intervention in the tax avoidance debate has provided ‘good background publicity’ for John Lewis, the company’s managing director Andy Street said yesterday.
Sky News reported that the retailer ‘says consumers may be shifting their buying habits in a backlash against shops they believe are trying to avoid tax’. Street was more cautious than the headline suggested, however, as he welcomed a ‘dramatic’ increase in online sales three weeks after he warned that companies based in tax havens would ‘out-invest and ultimately out-trade’ other businesses operating in the UK.
The Financial Times quoted the company’s retail director Andrew Murphy as saying that it although it was difficult to measure, ‘we have seen some press comment and some anecdotal customer comment to the effect that people are “happy” that we are a taxpaying British company … [but] it would be wrong to attribute the success to that’.
‘Paying the right amount’
‘It probably comes down to one word – trust,’ Street told Dermot Murnaghan of Sky News. ‘Trust in our pricing [and] trust that we will be here for the long term and we will do the right thing in terms of any after-sales care issues.’
Murnaghan asked: ‘Do you think [trust] also applies to the fact that you are UK based and they can trust you to pay your dues when you have to?’
‘I can’t prove that,’ Street said, adding that a ‘dramatic’ increase in online trade in the last three weeks ‘does coincide with the observations about paying corporation tax’.
He added: ‘I think our customers expect John Lewis to be a responsible business … to be a good citizen. That extends from the conditions in the supply chain through to paying the right amount of corporation tax – and it was for that reason that I was happy to be the first business to just observe that others should consider their positions when we kicked that debate off about three weeks ago.’
Murnaghan suggested that other factors including increased use of smartphones could be behind the figures, and asked: ‘You do feel that the debate about how much multinationals and internet companies pay has had an effect?’
Street said: ‘I can’t prove it, but it’s definitely been “good background publicity”.’
Asked whether he thought the business’s approach to sharing profits with employees, and paying ‘the right amount’ of tax, were about ‘morality more than anything else’, Street said: ‘Yes, certainly the paying tax is about morality.'
Tax is a moral issue for businesses, and a recent intervention in the tax avoidance debate has provided ‘good background publicity’ for John Lewis, the company’s managing director Andy Street said yesterday.
Sky News reported that the retailer ‘says consumers may be shifting their buying habits in a backlash against shops they believe are trying to avoid tax’. Street was more cautious than the headline suggested, however, as he welcomed a ‘dramatic’ increase in online sales three weeks after he warned that companies based in tax havens would ‘out-invest and ultimately out-trade’ other businesses operating in the UK.
The Financial Times quoted the company’s retail director Andrew Murphy as saying that it although it was difficult to measure, ‘we have seen some press comment and some anecdotal customer comment to the effect that people are “happy” that we are a taxpaying British company … [but] it would be wrong to attribute the success to that’.
‘Paying the right amount’
‘It probably comes down to one word – trust,’ Street told Dermot Murnaghan of Sky News. ‘Trust in our pricing [and] trust that we will be here for the long term and we will do the right thing in terms of any after-sales care issues.’
Murnaghan asked: ‘Do you think [trust] also applies to the fact that you are UK based and they can trust you to pay your dues when you have to?’
‘I can’t prove that,’ Street said, adding that a ‘dramatic’ increase in online trade in the last three weeks ‘does coincide with the observations about paying corporation tax’.
He added: ‘I think our customers expect John Lewis to be a responsible business … to be a good citizen. That extends from the conditions in the supply chain through to paying the right amount of corporation tax – and it was for that reason that I was happy to be the first business to just observe that others should consider their positions when we kicked that debate off about three weeks ago.’
Murnaghan suggested that other factors including increased use of smartphones could be behind the figures, and asked: ‘You do feel that the debate about how much multinationals and internet companies pay has had an effect?’
Street said: ‘I can’t prove it, but it’s definitely been “good background publicity”.’
Asked whether he thought the business’s approach to sharing profits with employees, and paying ‘the right amount’ of tax, were about ‘morality more than anything else’, Street said: ‘Yes, certainly the paying tax is about morality.'
