Experience: Rob Hattrell worked at Accenture and Tesco before joining eBay
As Rishi Sunak puts the finishing touches to his Budget statement, Rob Hattrell, the European boss of eBay, has a message for the Chancellor: if you launch a tax raid on online retailers, make sure it doesn’t damage small businesses or put off shoppers.
The Covid lockdowns have sparked a surge in sales for internet giants such as eBay and Amazon at the expense of shuttered bricks-and-mortar shops.
As a result, calls to level the playing field for high street competitors – which typically face higher tax bills and running costs than online firms – have reached deafening levels.
The rumour mill has gone into overdrive ahead of Sunak’s speech on Wednesday, with talk of a new 1 per cent online sales tax and a one-off ‘excessive profits tax’ on the businesses that have banked bumper profits.
As well as Amazon and eBay, the extra taxes could hit the likes of delivery giant Ocado, takeaway firm Just Eat and even big supermarkets such as Tesco.
Hattrell, 45, says: ‘What I worry about is that, unless it’s done thoughtfully and carefully, what actually happens is that you end up taxing the people who will actually give you growth.
‘If you take the digital services tax – which came in last year – the way that was implemented in truth meant that all other platforms passed that straight on to small businesses.’ While eBay absorbed the 2 per cent levy on UK revenues, Amazon passed the cost on to sellers on its marketplace.
Speaking from his study, which is packed with books and Star Wars memorabilia snared in eBay auctions, Hattrell continues: ‘It’s an enormously challenging decision for the Chancellor.
‘The primary thing he has got to consider is that our only way out of our economic position is growth; we need to grow the economy, create jobs and investment.
‘It should focus on small businesses – they are more agile and need the confidence, liquidity and backing of the Government. So big business should pay the bill, not small businesses.
It should also not be a tax directly on purchasing things online – that’s not helpful competitively and I don’t think it’s helpful to the economy or gets to the heart of the problem.’
The eBay chief reveals he has made his points directly to the Government as Sunak weighs up the issue.
Hattrell, who spent seven years as an executive at Tesco, says he is actually rather uneasy about eBay being lumped together with fellow US giant Amazon as a business that profited from the pandemic.
He says: ‘We don’t want to be painted as winners [from Covid]. Our model is quite simple: we win when the small businesses on eBay win. That makes us different.’
The past year clearly hasn’t been too shabby though: global customer numbers jumped in the three months to December 31 and the total value of goods and services sold on the platform jumped a fifth. Meanwhile, a record 8,000 UK businesses a week joined the platform in December as Britons found their entrepreneurial spirit, from startups selling garden seeds to toy shop chains venturing online for the first time with their stores shut.
Some workers laid off or furloughed as a result of the Covid crisis even managed to turn hobbies into burgeoning ventures.
EBay launched in Britain in 1999, four years after it was founded as AuctionWeb by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar. It rapidly became the go-to place for geeky collectors and sharp-witted entrepreneurs and now has 185million customers worldwide. Former Walmart executive Jamie Iannone took overall charge last year and is busy selling its £6.5billion classifieds division which includes Gumtree.
During the pandemic, Hattrell was promoted from UK to European chief. It’s his biggest gig yet after 13 years at consultancy Accenture working with retail clients before the seven-year Tesco stint which encompassed its catastrophic accounting scandal.
On that, he reflects: ‘Leadership is about facing truths and in that story there were leaders who did not face truths and tackle them head on.’ The West Ham fan lives with his four daughters in an Essex village and assesses the new realities of working life: ‘In terms of office presenteeism, we will probably never revert to that, I know I won’t.
‘There were periods when I was out of the door at 6am, I never had breakfast with the kids or took them to school.
‘Now I’m never giving that up or going back. We’ll all end up working in a more balanced way.’
Hattrell says the first lockdown was typified by shoppers snapping up desks and computers, then DIY, craft, home brewing and baking kits before the fitness equipment boom really kicked in.
And he reckons he’s spotted a new trend during the latest lockdown: ‘We’re seeing now customers being more mindful of the things they buy in terms of their impact and where they came from.
‘Things like reused or refurbished products. They’re growing exceptionally, triple-digit growth.’
A trickier change has been the post-Brexit teething troubles around deliveries.
Buyers and sellers have faced a string of headaches since the Christmas Eve deal with the EU. Extra delivery and customs charges – and a heap of paperwork – has caused delays on both sides of the Channel.
Hattrell says the late conclusion to trade talks meant lots of ‘short- term confusion that will be solved’.
He is confident couriers will soon streamline the processes that are causing delays.
Hattrell says: ‘The services will be coming and effectively you’ll solve many of those problems, businesses always find a way and they will do, it’s just going to take a couple of months as a nation to work those through.’
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