Philip Hammond is mulling special ‘Amazon tax’ for online retailers to counter high street woes | City A.M.

Chancellor Philip Hammond has said he is considering a new tax for online businesses in recognition of the challenges faced by high street retailers.

Hammond told Sky News he believed “the nature of the offer on the high street” was changing permanently. “There’s going to be less retail, more leisure, bars, community facilities,” he said.

Although he has avoided committing to a reform of business rates, the chancellor said government wanted to “ensure that taxation is fair between businesses doing business the traditional way and those doing business online”.

“That requires us to renegotiate international tax treaties because many of the big online businesses are international companies,” he said.

“If we can’t get international agreement to do this we may have to look at temporary tax measures to rebalance the playing field until we can get international agreements.”

Asked for specifics, he added: “The EU has been talking about a tax on online platform businesses based on value generated.

“That’s certainly something we’d be prepared to consider.”

Hammond was speaking shortly after House of Fraser was bought out of administration by retail tycoon Mike Ashley for just £90m – a fraction of the price Chinese conglomerate Sanpower paid for it four years ago.

This year has seen several high street casualties, including Maplin, Toys R Us and East.