Morrisons supermarket CEO Dalton Philips has joined a host of high-street retailers, including Sainsbury’s boss Justin King, to lobby the government for a tax on online vendors. The rise of digital shopping giants such as ASOS and Amazon over the past decade has well and truly shaken up the retail industry, with the conveniences of competitive pricing, one-click buying options and simple payment methods denting the profits of many traditional “bricks-and-mortar” retailers.

Meanwhile, in the past three years, business rates for store owners have surged by 13% – an overhead that does not affect retailers with no physical outlets. In a Telegraph interview, Philips argued that steps must be taken to ensure that stores were not “disadvantaged” at the cost of their employees’ jobs. “I’m not into intervention for intervention’s sake,” Philips said, “but you’ve got to have a level playing field. As more and more sales migrate online, it seems to me intuitive that you would tax the online channels as well.”

While Morrisons has itself entered the online-shopping arena, after signing a £200 million deal with Ocado last year, Philips claims the company would be willing to pay any online sales tax on its new venture. Ironically, Ocado boss Tim Steiner has taken a less diplomatic position, saying that bricks-and-mortar retailers “need to shut more shops and stop moaning about it”. That could certainly make for a lively partnership going forward.

As Professional Manager reported earlier this month, Philip Green – chief of Top Shop parent company Arcadia – accused the government of artificially creating “crippling” business rates by fixing them, and suggested that a “rates holiday” between 2015 and 2017 could be implemented for owners of small shops.

But are the calls for an online-retail levy and the attacks on business rates really a bid to help small businesses on the high street – or a means of aiding the major retailers to hold on to their UK market share?

Since the economic downturn began, the dominant “Big Four” supermarkets – Sainsbury’s, Tesco, ASDA and Morrisons – have come under increasing pressure from both online retailers and physical rivals, as customers look for more cost-effective and time-efficient shopping options.

According to the latest IMRG Capgemini E-retail Sales Index, online sales in the UK jumped by 20% last month – their highest annual rate of growth since 2011. And this week, consumer behaviour specialists Kantar Worldpanel revealed that the supermarket scene has become increasingly polarised, with budget retailers Aldi and Lidl and luxury retailer Waitrose taking 11.7% of the market from the Big Four.

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