Some of London’s Top Retailers Call for a Sales Tax on ‘Largely Online’ Rivals

Six hundred of London’s commercial power players are subtweeting Amazon.

Under the banner of The New West End Company, the several-hundred-strong collective of some of the U.K. capital’s top retailers is lobbying for a 1% sales tax on primarily online retailers to parallel the property-linked taxes they already pay, The Independent reported.

The news mirrors concerns related to a recent high-profile Supreme Court decision, in which the Justices ruled that online retailers can be hit with a sales tax even when lacking brick-and-mortar stores or warehouses in the states in which they do digital business. Amazon’s shares fell upon news of the ruling, but pundits hold that the e-commerce hegemon will be largely unaffected.

Unfortunately for the Company, the bigwigs in Her Majesty’s Treasury seem hostile to the proposal. Yet the move is a sure sign that retailers unable to slow Amazon’s dominance in the markets could continue to look for a missing edge in the courts, similar to the way smaller players like Yelp have continually tried to chip away at Google’s allegedly unfair market advantage in search.