Barcelona City Council definitively approved this Friday the so-called Amazon tax that the municipality will charge companies that deliver products purchased online. The rate represents 1.25% of its activity and will only affect postal operators billing more than one million Euros per year. It will take effect next week.
Barcelona en Comú, PSC, ERC and Citizens Voted in favor of a measure by Ernest Maragall’s group, which was adopted in 2019 as a condition for agreeing with the Barcelona en Comú government and PSC on their 2020 budgets, it aims to encourage companies to apply to collection points for shipments above the transfer to homes, which is public creates a significant disguise in the field: these vans stopped while delivering the package.
leading measure
Concretization comes three and a half years after the process, which is complicated by its lack of precedent, begins. Because the consultation says and the experts who help say it’s a leading rate in Spain and Europe.
In total, the municipality will charge a maximum of 2.6 million euros per year for this delivery to the home; this figure was reached after a calculation linked to public space usage and corporate billing. It assumes that only 1.25% of the activity of postal operators, which will have to pay if they invoice more than one million euros per year.
If the phenomenon is reduced, if the number of vans stopping in the middle of the street as the delivery man rushes to deliver a package and returns to the vehicle, the collection would be less, but the government claims it lost that money. It wouldn’t be bad because it means a change in habits. Therefore, transportation of packages to collection points will not be affected by the fee. Another purpose of the tax is to protect traditional commerce against electronic commerce.
Five operators, 62% of billing
The number of postal operators in the Catalan capital, especially Amazon, with a turnover of over one million euros and, as mentioned earlier, have to pay the fee is 26. Other well-known ones are DHL or UPS, among others. Among the five companies with the highest turnover, they account for 62% of the total turnover.