CITY AND SUBURBAN
Technology and Transit vans cross frontiers and move faster than the excisemen can follow
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Watch the wall, my darling, when the Transit vans go by. Smuggling is a serious business nowadays and the excisemen are getting desperate. They have persuaded Camelot, the lottery operator, to suck up to them — any tobacconists caught handling baccy for the clerk will jolly well be deprived of their terminals and barred from selling tickets. More sensibly, they have invited Martin Taylor, late of Barclays, to tell them what on earth to do. That analytical mind will know better than to recommend a war on the vans, with revenue cutters lying in wait for them in Kentish lanes. They are no more than the outward and visible sign of an efficient market. If it is significantly cheaper to buy brandy and baccy in Boulogne than in Dover, that is where they will be bought, and the man who sets the rates of excise duties can thank himself. The hauliers have now cottoned on, filling their tanks in France and licensing their lorries in Belgium. This is what the European Commission calls waste- ful tax competition, looking forward to a day when it will set uniform tax rates for the whole of Europe. It will then find revenues slipping from its grasp and escaping across its borders. Revenues from service industries are the most elusive of all. Already Victor Chandler, the bookie, has proved betting duty to be optional by moving its book to Gibraltar. Stamp duty is optional for investors in HSBC. The shares are now list- ed in New York as well as in London: duty paid here, duty-free there. If London's capi- tal markets are caught in an interest equali- sation tax, they too will move, to New York or into the ether. Technology transcends frontiers, moving further and faster than the excisemen can follow.
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