Free trade – or daylight robbery

IT HAS to be more than an anomaly that smuggling can make handsome profits in a free trade area such as the EU.

By definition, surely, anyone who pays tax on beer or smokes in France or Italy should not be surcharged, penalised or double-taxed for bringing these goods back across EU borders to Ireland or Britain irrespective of the amounts involved.

Customs and Excise are acting as a law unto themselves by interfering in this free trade. It could be construed as provocation and simply encourages smuggling and black marketeering.

Net contributors to the EU like the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Britain could complain that we are not being allowed to buy more of their products at their rate of taxation, rather than at some arbitrary rate set by our own mandarins.

As for vehicle registration tax on cars, it's daylight robbery. And just because it brings in millions doesn't make it right. How can it not be a violation of the first principles of free trade? Richard Dowling,

Coote Street,

Mountrath,

Co Laois.