Quote from: albert;414527The EU should not be given credit for commerce that is actually down to the the Internet age.
Let me just burst that bubble for you. Nobody pays no VAT whatsoever. It is paid in one way or another. Physical products you buy from the internet has to be shipped from somewhere. As you stated the phone was sent from Amsterdam. Since the UK at the moment is in the EU and this is regarded as the inner market. The VAT you paid for the phone where most likely paid to the Netherlands. Aka no customs and tariffs for you in the UK. This is how the inner market of the EU works in a nutshell. (There are some exceptions like car taxes etc).
Now since you voted to leave you will most likely end up with some sort of EEA agreement like Norway. That means you will have to pay importfees for everything coming in from abroad. Even if you paid VAT in the sender country. All packages sent to Norway with a value above 350 NOK included shipping costs ends up getting a 110 NOK Importfee and 25 % VAT on the value and shipping.
Also the EEA agreement means paying a lot of money to get access to the inner market without restrictions for most goods(amount, not tolls necessary. Agriculture and fishing exempt) without having anything to say about it. We are a defacto EU country with none of the really good bits like access to the inner market for citizens. We have ratified more EU rules than most EU countries. Even Germany.
Norway will pay 391,45 million Euros per year between 2014-2021 just for having access to the EUs markets.Thats 77 euros per citizen per year.
Lets to the math for the UK. 61,1 million peoples aka 77 euros per citizen equals 4,87 billion euros per year to just to have access and not the other goods like being a part of the inner market or actually being able to sit at the table and discuss the use of those funds. The net contribution by the UK is 8.5 billion euros. You can also subtract 1.4 billion euros of that sum in research grants given to private companies in the UK from the EU. So the real figure is 7,4 billion euros.
So lets have a discussion on what those 7,4 billion euros are used for. They make it possible for students across Europe to attend universities. The Erasmus agreement. They go to invest in infrastructure in the poorer developed EU nations to bring them up to speed. etc etc.
The whole idea about the EU is to make every member state just as good. This requires the more wealthy nations to contribute to the poorer to get them up and running. This is not a new thing. Where would we have been after WW2 if not for the US funded Marshall aid?
The whole Leave campaign statistics was deceitful and Rupert Murdochs newspapers flat out lying was painful to watch. Hell. Nigel Farage said that the NHS promise is not valid anymore. So the EU is not perfect, but in my opinion the other option is worse. Europe has prospered with the EU. We will not prosper as a continent if we go back to the isolationist state before WW1.
