Oxford Street’s American candy stores under tax scanner

American candy stores engulfing Oxford Street and London’s West End are under investigation for alleged tax avoidance.

As per recent reports, Westminster City Council is looking into 30 shops along Oxford Street for evasion of business rates amounting to £7.9m, as well as the questionable ways in which some of the stores are run.

This includes Kingdom of Sweets, which has 12 stores in the UK and others in Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands, is among the outlets being probed.

It is being claimed that officials are looking into a purported tactic which sees heads of a single store name setting up several limited companies to act as its legal owner.

These firms are then closed down before they are liable for business rates, allowing them to bypass the tax system, states a report by Daily Mail.

Investigators reportedly are also concerned about another tactic used by rivals which sees shops set up in empty buildings to avoid paying business rates on empty premises.

Westminster City Council’s Trading Standards team are also investigating inflated prices at many of these sweet shops. There have also been claims that stores don’t display prices on any of their items, while others have been accused of selling out-of-date food and counterfeit products.

Westminster City Council says the “eyesore” stores not only pose a threat to the status of Oxford Street, but are swindling customers.

“Anyone walking down Oxford Street is struck by the ever expanding number of US style sweet shops and poor quality souvenir outlets. They are not only an eye sore; they are a threat to the status and value of what is supposed to be the nation’s premier shopping street,” Cllr Adam Hug, leader of Westminster City Council, said.

The council has also taken action against false and illegal advertising and the sale of counterfeit goods, having so far seized around £474,000 worth of goods in one week alone. The seized products include 4,500 disposable vapes containing excess levels of nicotine or tank sizes not conforming to UK standards, and thousands more tobacco or shisha products that had no warning of safety labelling.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Kingdom of Sweets said, “We are a respectable business paying all relevant taxes and business rates. The issue of rival stores opening and then closing without paying business rates has had a detrimental impact on our trading in an extremely difficult environment.

“As a responsible business we support plans to clamp down on this practice and will continue working with Westminster Council.”