I still hate the Chancellor

[supertinks]

so this whole VAT cut issue. Not only is it still causing me mountains of hassle at work, but I really am starting to get annoyed with it from a consumer point of view. How is it supposed to encourage me to shop?

I bought fidget a new collar yesterday, as he lost his purple one (the new one is an incredibly cutesy pale baby blue - icky, but it was that or baby pink!). It was £2.99 on the shelf. "Fair enough" says I, and buys it. At the till, I get my VAT discount. A whole 7p. Oooooh.

And today, I bought a skirt from Next (I have a thing about skirts right now, I need more of them! probably because they always fit better than trousers). Label says £30. Goes through the till, it actually costs me £29.36. A saving of a whole 64p. Makes no difference to my brain when it comes to rationalising the cost, because if the label had said £29.36, my brain would have just gone "ok, its £30" and carried on from there.

So what is the point????

Comments

[rwstagg.livejournal.com]

They will be pocketing this difference throughout the entire period, not just the first week/month, and then will no doubt increase their prices by 2.5% once the rate returns to 17.5%.

Of course if lots of stores are in fact doing the VAT discounting at the tills then it won't be businesses that directly benefit at all, it will be the consumers, admitidely to a very small degree. While obviously it's sneaky by the government, you can't entirely blame them for the greed of the small companies.