View Full Version : Coral Tax
Should the end user pay a tax on each piece of hard coral they buy {say £1} which went directly back to charities working on the reefs.
who would be happy to pay it and who wouldn't want to :thumbsup:
closed poll so you cant see who voted for what, so speak freely
scrumpymini
03-08-08, 10:17
Sure would :thumbsup:
GSXRnutter
03-08-08, 10:19
I would its only a quid.
Espocrespo
03-08-08, 10:24
Yes, its only a quid, and if its for a good cause.
Sure but
out of the £40 paid, how much of that goes to the coral farmer? I think it should be the shops who donate the £1, sorry
Sure but
out of the £40 paid, how much of that goes to the coral farmer? I think it should be the shops who donate the £1, sorry
I would have thought that unless a specific charity was set up there would be no way for a show to get the money to the people who need it. I'm sure the wholsesales would love it if all their customers asked them to put prices up but doubt that this would be passed on.
From my limited knowledge the margins these shops work on are well below what any company I've worked for would accept.
So the money may go to a charity which is activily trying to stop the collection of corals from coral reefs??
Turkeys voting for christmas springs to mind.
wills, talk about this subject when I come and visit ;)
it's hard to direcly put the money back to the community. would it be the case of one rich coral farmer or a richer community?
Like all charities 80% would be swallowed up in running costs. The other 20% would make no differance as it would be spread too thin.
Shops could do this without the end buyer ever knowing as they price the coral also not sure how it would be interpreted that the pound would be added or not.
In practise it makes a good idea but i think hard to do in reality, perhaps if there was some sort of charity or something that people could donate to if it has not been set up already then perhaps that would be an idea solution.
:)
neilharris
03-08-08, 11:30
Waste of time and money really. Chances of the actual farmer/worker getting anything out of the £1 is pretty much zero! I agree with the above, if it was to happen, the shop should pay the charity. :D
From my limited knowledge the margins these shops work on are well below what any company I've worked for would accept.
I’m fairly sure markups are very high. I’ve tried selling corals to shops for 35% of the retail price only to be told they were too expensive, I was offered around 20% by those that showed any interest.
no i thinkyour missing the point, the theory is to just pay a £1 per coral sold to the charity that is set up to help with ecological reefing and eduction to the farmers/collectors, it has nothing to do with stopping people collecting and nothing to do with the chain of handling and every penny of the £1 would get directly back to the people involved.
yes shops could build this into there prices, but it would be easier imo to simply have a seperate buttonon the till for it and then total up per week the numbers sold and deposit the ammount into the charitys account, it would be a monitored charity and not a 3rd world rip off like some have tried in the past.
in effect the shop is paying the chairty, but having a seperate button will also have extra tax benefits im sure, as donatins to chairty will be vat exempt i belive much like books, so there would be a 17.5% saving straight away.
not a chance as there is no way the quid would find its way back to the desired source.
yes it could very easily if dealt with correctly :thumbsup: as long as the shops were honest with there declartions i think it would easily work, it would just need the support of the end users to make a deal of it.
dan-the-man
03-08-08, 13:51
Even if it did find its way back to the source (collectors) then how many people would want to be collectors? Everyone! Then even more money would need to be put in to ecological reefing and I imagine the situation becoming worse.
If it went towards educating the collectors they would want more for the simple reason that they are trained in something....
If it could work it would be superb, but I don't think the money would be distributed to the correct people, in full, or in a way that would (in the long term) help the reefs.
designsonline.co.uk
03-08-08, 14:07
I prefer to select which charities I donate to myself, and how much and how often. I wouldnt appreciate being "forced" to donate to a charity of someone elses choice simply because I wish to make a purchase.
Just being honest....
Wills
Let us spin the question round a little.
Would you, as a retailer, be happy to give £1 from the gross profit of a coral to a charity that is fully active in providing for the poorer areas that the coral came from rather than asking the customer ?
That will make it interesting as you are asking the customer to forcibly donate to a charity not of their choosing. It increases the expense of the item for the customer yet does not cost the retailer a penny.
Why should the customer be encouraged to invest in the areas that generate the exports and profits for everyone else in the chain ?
Do the customers ever see a dividend from any of these companies or retailers ? Didn't think so.
Why don't the suppliers and LFS just fix pri ..........
no, i would have no problem at all, i would simply reduce the cost fro say 30 to 29 and then put the £1 into the charity, but it would require the support of the customers in order to do so otherwise it wouldnt seem a worth whilst idea, it would also require the support of multiple shops, and its not about profits or anything like that its about developing our industry further and taking away from sme of the negative views we all ready get.
this is just a discussion at the end of the day and far from a reality, but its intreasting to see different people views on the subject imho.
no, i would have no problem at all, i would simply reduce the cost fro say 30 to 29 and then put the £1 into the charity, but it would require the support of the customers in order to do so otherwise it wouldnt seem a worth whilst idea, it would also require the support of multiple shops, and its not about profits or anything like that its about developing our industry further and taking away from sme of the negative views we all ready get.
this is just a discussion at the end of the day and far from a reality, but its intreasting to see different people views on the subject imho.
Why would it require the support of the customers other than at point of purchase ?
If a National Charity was established BY THE RETAILERS and their charter was that they would donate to the charity WITHOUT affecting the end price to the customer then customers would be free to elect to purchase livestock from supporting retailers without financial penalty.
Your original post suggested that the customer should be the one to donate, not the retailer.
I suggest that the LFS should start to look after their own business and not ours. After all, go to the well too often and the well dries up.
Surely the best way forward would be for some type of 'Fair Trade association' like there is in some of the poorer farming countries ie coffee
that way it does give the farmer a chance of decent living
I prefer to select which charities I donate to myself, and how much and how often. I wouldnt appreciate being "forced" to donate to a charity of someone elses choice simply because I wish to make a purchase.
Just being honest....
perfectly fair answer mate, and one i agree with, its the one thing that makes me wonder weather this system would work, even if the shop was to put the money up it wont seem like that, it will simply seem like it was a dictated donation and people dont like that.
the system could easily work, if it was something that many shops and suppliers supported it could change the industry imo and for the better, you could easily creat enough of a revenue stream from it to control and monitor export permits and coral farms, simply as the cost in labour over there is so much lower, wether it would be open to blatant abuse and hike up the grey import area further would always be a worry i guess.
as without the support of the customers then there would be no reason for multiple shops to sign upto it.
it would be the customer donating as it would be there money being used to pay the donatin fee, there is nothing wrong with the buisness model most shops adheare to at the moment, but all you see on forums and general discussions nowadays is how bad for the enviroment we are and the damage farming does, and how little the farms get paid etc, that isnt something the shop can deal with in general its something that needs everyones support to develop further imo.
its all just a discussion point anyway, its not like it would ever work as there are t many companies in the chain who would want to abuse the system, mainly the end shops look at what happened with the mac fish, so many people were claiming to be mac affiliated but unless you had a seperate mac system like tmc and dejong you couldnt even apply to be so.
an ex sponsor on here used to claim it and used there logos all over his site, and it was complete rubbish, and one of the reason the mac stuff hasnt taken off as well as it should have.
The MAC (Marine Aquarium Council) has joined forces with the other (more) ethical trading schemes - Fairtrade, Forest Stewardship, etc have pledged some new way of working together etc (see website www.aquariumcouncil.org)
This sort of scheme would only work if hobbists took a different view to the costs of corals - i.e. we need to pay more for getting corals which went through the accreditation process to help guarantee fairer wages for people collecting the corals.
Sorry if this has already been mentioned in this forum/thread I have only seen the last page.
I am sure that the majority of people would be thinking more about prices and not actually considering the effort which went into getting the corals to the UK in the first place.
The environmental costs alone if reflected in the price of corals would put many corals out of the reach of many reef keepers.
It is often said that the air industry pays a fraction of the tax we all pay for fuel because lets face it they burn thousands of gallons of fuel per flight - if they paid the same tax as the rest of us (motorists etc) then air travel would be much more expensive and the cost of trading products which are flown would also rocket....
I would like to see more trading schemes which benefit the local economy and the local environment - I would be happy to pay more aswell
J
How about shops if displayed more information on suitable charities (even just a notice on a board) or a collection tin on the desk?
I know this seems rather a watered down idea of the original concept, but raising awareness is very important and it gives people the option to choose the charity they may want to support.
richunderwater
18-08-08, 14:31
yes - there should be a tax - our hobby is responsible for some woeful examples of ecosystem damage. i've dived on reefs following cynaide fishing for example and know just what the dodgy end of the marine trade can do. indeed over 75% of the worlkd's reefs are classed as degraded or in danger, admittedly damnage from the aqwuarium trade isn't all to blame, but must have some impact
i also know that the hobby is getting better and like many people i buy cultured corals and look forward to the days when more fish are captive bred and only buy speciesd i know i can keep.
charities like the marine stewardship council are worth a lool
I think we pay more than enough already.
I'd pay up to 5% of the retail price if it could be made to work
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