I like to look at trends because they are interesting and many have tax implications.* Trends may indicate a need to update or modernize tax rules or systems. I'm a bit behind on blogging on this, but several weeks ago, there was an article in Fortune - Phil Wahba, "Major Wall Street Firm Expects 25% of U.S. Malls to Close by 2022," 5/31/17. Reasons included bankruptcies and continuing growth in retail e-commerce sales.
I remember when the US Census Bureau first started reporting retail sales for e-commerce in the 1990s and it was less than 1%. They just updated data for 2015 and report that e-commerce retail sales represent 7.2% of total sales for 2015 (it was 6.4% in 2014). That doesn't seem like a lot to me. In contrast, the US Census Bureau reports that for 2015, e-commerce sales of merchant wholesalers represented 30.2% of total sales (it was 28.1% in 2014). Are retail e-commerce sales going to increase to the point were 25% of US malls will close in the next five years? Seems high to me. I expect re-purposing where, perhaps, we might do more online shopping while at the mall looking at samples of what we can buy, and getting a latte and recharging our smartphones. That would use less retail space. Malls might add more ways for people to hang out - activities, fairs, etc. Tax implications? A few:
What do you think? Will we see 25% of malls close? What will happen to the space?
*For some nostalgia, see this June 2008 blog post on some trends relevant to tax reform.
from http://21stcenturytaxation.blogspot.com/2017/08/shopping-trends-and-taxes.html
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