[danaris]

Unfortunately, that would make some entire categories of business non-viable. Any business that relies on importing raw materials would be hit with punishing taxes—unless their margins were huge, or their local & labour costs were orders of magnitude higher than their import raw material costs, they would likely not be able to operate.

Effectively, you would be taxing them on revenue, rather than profit.

[aembleton]

For those businesses that import raw materials, and sell on in the UK for a small margin then yes they would be unviable. They would have to increase that margin.

If they are exporting, then this would not affect them.

If they are selling on for a large margin, then they would be able to absorb at least some of the tax.

[mcv]

They wouldn't get to deduct the costs of importing those raw materials, but they would get to deduct the costs (labour, probably) of refining them and making something out of those raw materials. And if they sell back to the country they imported raw materials from, they get to deduct the raw material costs from those profits (assuming that country uses a similar scheme).

But you're right, for a company that makes their revenue in a different country than where they make their costs, it's effectively a tax on revenue. So it would encourage countries to make their costs in the same countries where they sell. It might stop companies from moving all their jobs to low-wage countries.

I admit raw materials would be an issue; those are not equally available everywhere. But at the same time, it would effect every company in that industry equally, so I don't think the end result would be that much of a problem. I guess it'd discourage extracting raw materials from poor countries. Would that reduce their exploitation by western companies, or would that deny them the exports they need to grow their economy? I don't really know.

[IAmEveryone]

That's totally unworkable. That banana you buy in the supermarket is imported and sold with a gross margin in the low single-digits. Taxes the revenue at income tax levels would effectively raise prices by the tax rate, i. e. 30% or so.

If the supermarket doesn't buy the banana directly from the plantation, that tax would accrue at every step of the chain. You'd effectively be prohibiting trade and people would switch to monthly drives to local farms and an entirely potato-based diet.

[mcv]

Many products already have a VAT tax of 20%, and that doesn't seem to stop them. True, bananas would probably get more expensive, but again, countries could mitigate this through trade deals with countries they believe have a fair tax system.

But it's true, local products would have a significant fiscal advantage over products from other countries, especially products with complicated supply chains across many different countries, some of which countries are tax havens that the target country doesn't consider having a fair tax system.

The change would probably be a shock to many companies, but it'd also make it impossible for companies to shift their profits to tax havens.

[aembleton]

Only if every step of the chain is in your country. This tax would only affect the sale of goods in your own country, not those that you then go on and export.

Yes, it would increase the price of bananas in the UK as we currently don't tax food. But, it might make an apple relatively cheaper. That would then help to keep money in the UK as it could be grown here; employing people in the UK who then pay tax here.

[danaris]

> But at the same time, it would effect every company in that industry equally, so I don't think the end result would be that much of a problem.

It would be a problem if it meant that an entire category of product suddenly became completely impossible to profitably produce in the country—particularly if it was one that had been produced in significant quantity there for some time.