[HoverSausage]

I know very little about trade law so this may be very stupid of me to ask, but if we're making it difficult for foreign companies to sell into the UK won't that put foreign companies at a unfair disadvantage compared to UK companies? Are we going to face retaliatory trade barriers from 195 countries soon as they try to level the playing field for their businesses by making it equally difficult and costly for UK businesses to sell into their countries?

[NullPrefix]

Creating uneven playing field between foreign and domestic businesses was one of the reasons for brexit.

[neilwilson]

All barriers are about favouring internal producers over external producers. That's sort of the point of them. And it's been like this for the rest of the world for a very long time. All we've done is added the EU countries to the pile - levelling the playing field and sorting out anomalies on the way.

But, importantly, processing these things is somebody's job - which increases economic activity and GDP. So it's not as straightforward as it sounds - particularly when there is a systemic shortage of jobs, and there is a floating exchange rate which balances the effect in any case.

The purpose of these changes is to push trade through Online market places - who sort the VAT for you.