to refuse to present boarding pass at airport shops

[ProjectPerfect]

I had always assumed that as passengers we were legally obliged to hand over our boarding passes when shopping in UK airports.

However we're not and the stores are using it as a way of claiming VAT back from HMCR without passing those savings on to consumers.

Don't know why I'm shocked but I am

www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/11794109/The-real-reason-airport-shops-want-to-see-your-boarding-pass.html

ThroughThickAndThin I've never smoked and neither has DH or our siblings their partners or their children AFAIK. My parents smoked but gave up about 40 years ago. DH's mum gave up about 15 years ago.

Their decision to smoke didn't affect any of us either way. I never wanted to do it but neither did I find it disgusting. But I was always a bit scared that the police might arrest my mum when they changed the buses from double deckers where you could smoke on top, to single deckers which were non-smoking, and she'd go down the back and duck behind the seats like she was 14.

Hardly any of our friends do either but there's a hard core of around 10 of them all aged 35 to 65 who are the ones who gag for cheap fags when I go on holiday. It's quite funny when they hand over their wish lists and say: 'Oh well, perhaps you should get his this time because you got mine last time and I don't want you to get into trouble for bringing back too many EXCEPT I'M A FUCKING ADDICT AND IT'S BANKRUPTING ME AND I REALLY WANT YOU TO.'

I feel like Bad Santa.

I work with most of them and I do get a bit sick of shivering outside pubs with them but otherwise I'd have to sit indoors on my own.

The only young person I know is 16 and he's the son of one of that group of 10. They sneakily smoke together as an act of rebellion against the wife/mum - like as if she's a Gorgon.

It's so childish. The 16 year old is only a child so that's excusable. But though I don't doubt his dad loves him, it's so stupid.

In my 20s - I'm now 50 - it was more common for my friends to smoke, slightly more women than men - but the non-smokers still outnumbered them. It was just that everywhere you went was full of smoke.

Pubs, restaurants, cinemas, trains, planes, buses, taxis - even libraries. You couldn't have a social life or travel to one without cigarette smoke.

When the ban was brought in - 2005, was it? - I wasn't that fussed because most places I went had already imposed their own bans or in those that hadn't, most people didn't smoke.

But now, even though I don't hate smokers and think it's okay for them to smoke outside, it's miles better.

Sorry for taking it off on a smoking tangent

Interesting, bakingdiva. Though I may need to reread your post to take it in properly!

I see your point about airport outlets not worrying about selling water, as that's not liable for VAT anyway. The same, then, for newspapers and books?

limitedperiod - you remember people smoking in libraries?

Just to clarify, I'm not saying that the shops aren't ripping people off, but the VAT explanation doesn't hold water. To file a VAT return, you are required to differentiate your sales between UK, EU and the rest of the world. You can 'get away' with the odd misclassification (although I didn't say that if there are any HMRC inspectors around!) especially if you classify them as having to pay over VAT rather than not, but when the retailer gets inspected, and they will be, there is an requirement that they have the correct documentation to justify their classification.

Another reason why retailers will ask the same questions at airports where there is majority EU flights, is because they are not going to tailor their systems to individual airports, they will have one system installed in all.

I'm not quite in my fifties but getting there (as my username suggests!) and remember smoking everywhere, including a smoking room at work and a smoking and non-smoking side to the cinema (which was ridiculous because everyone stank of smoke afterwards regardless of where we sat)

smoking being allowed everywhere, that should say...

Most likely Princess. If all you are buying is a newspaper then You could argue that the retailers could just classify all these sales as UK/EU and they wouldn't be out of pocket. But, technically, even if the goods are zero rated, you still have to split them between the different regions of sale (UK/EU/rest of world) to have a correct VAT return and also retailers, and most businesses, want to have a standardised process across as many locations as possible, so all airports.

PrincessFiorimonde

limitedperiod - you remember people smoking in libraries?

Working in 1986/87, you were allowed to smoke in the (open plan) office I worked in. Only one person (out of 50) did though. Oh - actually 2. But the other used to disappear into the printer room to be considerate.

Just started season 4 of "Mad Men" and were amused to see a doctor lighting up as he finished a consultation.

Remember, in the 1950s (certainly in the US) there were adverts saying "Ask your doctor what brand he smokes" ...

princessFiorimonde people smoked everywhere and not that long ago. Even as a non-smoking child from a mostly non-smoking family I regarded it as normal.

Princess.... I'm 41 and my P7 teacher used to smoke at the back of the class - about 30 years ago.

Johann Cruyff, supremely talented 70s player and one of my first loves, used to smoke about 40 a day.

I remember him stubbing them out on the touchline.

I'm not saying it's good...

I'm in my 30s and remember being on a transatlantic flight where people smoked

OP I went on holiday in 1983 with two smokers.

It was a midnight flight and they stocked up on duty free fags and we chose seats in the smoking section and they smoked like beagles for two hours because it was a novelty being away from their parents.

I could barely speak at the end.

On the return flight we all booked seats at the non-smoking front because the back of the plane was so disgusting.

limited he was my first love too! I never noticed the smoking as every adult I knew smoked.

Except my Dad didn't smoke and I thought he was a bit eccentric tbh!

You misunderstand me about the smoking query. I'm 55, so I too remember people smoking just about everywhere - including open-plan offices in the mid-80s. (I was one of those smokers .) It's just that I thought libraries were one of the few places where that didn't happen.

I remember going to visit someone in hospital in 1970 and that people were allowed to smoke on the ward. But that might be a false memory - perhaps it was just allowed in the day room?

I imagine Cruyff wasn't the only footballer who smoked, but stubbing cigarettes out on the touchline is a bit too.

Anyway, OP - sorry to derail your thread!

Isn't the legal starting point however that a shop can decide it's rules on how and whom it serves? So they could say no one in scruffy clothes and as they own the land they decide who is and is not (as long as no disablity discrimination etc). They can say no cash or only cash. So therefore they can say only boarding passes just as I could say only people wearing a green scarf are allowed on to my land.

I was shocked. I thought it was a discount on the goods, not for their pocket! Been a bit ????today. now they ve been rumbled, i bet the shop staff will start getting more abuse as people refuse to let them scan it.

Back to having to show your boarding pass before buying things in airports.

Just remembered that one of the Gatwick pubs refused to serve DP a few months ago because he didn't have his boarding pass on him. There were several other would-be customers in the same position, hanging about crossly because their OHs had gone off to the loo or shops with the passes in their bags/pockets. (Some customers, I guess, will have been travelling outside the EU; others - like us - weren't.) The staff were very apologetic and one did tell DP it was a new thing decided by management, and was definitely to do with marketing.

Thinking about it now - could it have had any connection with VAT? But, if so, why was it a new thing - why wasn't the pub asking for boarding passes in the several years previously that we'd used it?

Sorry, didn't realise you're my vintage PrincessFiorimonde

Yes, my branch library was a smoking free-for-all. My mum used to park me there under the eye of a librarian who looked like this

The county council built a wonderful bigger library (those days of unfettered council spending, eh?) about a mile away in about 1976 where they banned smoking. I loved both of them but the bigger one had more books off the shelf without having to order them and was good for school books and study.

They also had the radical idea of making a garden at the back of highly scented plants for partially-sighted people, where they not unreasonably asked people not to smoke.

The outrage!

Their commitment to learning and the disabled was amazing considering they were and always will be a true blue council.

The branch library has been sold for flats and the main library is a pale shadow now.

This is old news
its bugged me for years and its nothing to do with Duty Free
and all about fiddling VAT

princess
the pub do not ask because they only sell stuff to be consumed on the premises so there is no chance they could persuade the VAT man that you were going to take your lager to Dubai

a toblerone is a different matter

But yes, to drag it back.

DH has a shop. He has customers based outside the EU. AFAIK they fill in a claim form and he registers it with HMRC. He has a sticker and literature about duty-free shopping for non-EU residents that is internationally-recognised.

He used to work for someone who used to pocket it but I don't understand how that worked.

He does resent being an unpaid collector for HMRC and Customs and Excise and I don't blame him.

I do wonder if airports have potentially got more to lose refusing customers at a bar as Oh are at loo with BC than they would have not claiming/ not paying tax on said order?