Shops in Smalltown have started a new campaign aimed at tax avoidance and reducing costs for businesses in the town.
Posters are being displayed in shops supporting the scheme to urge shoppers to stop using debit and credit cards and to use the barter system instead.
Former Councillor Dick Trolley who runs Dick Trolley’s Missing Arches in Kidlington Street was wheeled out to promote the scheme.
Dick said “We lose a lot of money when people pay by card. We have to pay to have a card machine and each transaction sees the banks take their share of our money. It can mount up to a lot of money each month – although nowhere near as much as the Missing Arch cost Smalltown and Dullbridge (SaD) Town Council.
We are hoping that by reintroducing the barter system in Smalltown we can hide some of our transactions from the tax man, because we will be able to create a black economy which will benefit traders in the town. Obviously there will be no benefits to shoppers who will have to carry around a dozen eggs, a caulflower or half a dozen bricks and a bag of cement in their shopping bags.
When a shopper wishes to purchase something in one of the shops in the scheme we would encourage them to hand over goods to the equivalent value. For example, if someone wanted to buy an old dress in Lady Brassy’s Bijou Boutique for Cast-Off Clothing, instead of using money to complete the purchase they would offer goods or services to an equivalent value. The new dress could cost you that string of Grandma’s pearls or an original Van Gogh self-portrait. You could even find yourself doing a shift behind the counter.
Obviously it may be a bit of a challenge due to the need for a double coincidence of wants, where both shopper and shopkeeper must desire what the other offers, but we firmly believe that this is the way forward.
Several shops have signed up to the scheme including 94 pizza shops, 86 charity shops, 114 hairdressers, 12 estate agents, and a newspaper and tat shop.