The Black Dog on how Brexit crippled small UK businesses
The Black Dog are a wonderful band who most often make grand ambient music, lately about architecture in different ways, not seldom based in brutalism.
Here's something thoughtful that they recently wrote on the cost of being, well, a small business owner in the UK, having to ship stuff across the world, due to Brexit and EU import costs that push monopsonies like Amazon even higher up the ladder, crushing individual's companies.
As if they don’t tax us enough already, the powers that be have added yet another tax to parcels you may receive.
Honestly, this is crushing small businesses like us in the UK. We can’t think of one good thing to come from Brexit or these new taxes. What’s worse is that you can’t find anyone who can help a small business like ours. The Royal Mail doesn’t know how it’s going to work, the IOSS people don’t know how it’s going to work, and the government doesn’t seem to know how this new tax will be applied.
Imagine that. Millions of small businesses that don’t know where to turn.
If you want to avoid these taxes, we recommend that customers in the USA buy from Forced Exposure, and customers in Europe buy from Kompakt.
We’re told this is a “big test” and that more taxes will be added in August. Meanwhile, businesses like us are left to pick up the pieces and suffer the fallout.
We’re really sorry this is happening, but there is nowhere to turn for clear information about how or why this is being introduced. Until we know exactly what’s happening, we recommend that customers in the USA and Europe buy from Forced Exposure and Kompakt to avoid these extra charges, because at the minute no one seems to know how this is going to work.
It's fucking diabolical to see how businesses and artists are massively hit by Brexit, the EU, the USA, and other nefarious nationalistic thangs. I know too many artists that can no longer tour outside of their home country because of this stuff and, of course, because of Spotify and their ilk. Don't forget to buy music and stream music via good companies/organisations.
For a taste of The Black Dog, check out Spanners, their classic album from 1995. For a more recent example: