If a charity sets up a ‘returned product classification’ flow and issues tax credits to companies donating their return flow to the charity, then companies can simply shunt returns to charity and lower their costs in triplicate: 1) changeover of return provider replaces expense with deduction; 2) compliance with EU regulations costs shipping to charity; 3) charity provides itemized receipts for compliance and further tax credits. Of course, companies won’t actually lower their prices to reflect the net reduction in costs, but it will certainly strip away the excuse that they must raise costs.

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mpyne 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Couldn't they already do this today, without an additional regulation?

Why is a charity supposed to be able to magically conjure sales the original seller was unable to find?

I just think if it was as easy to doing this, there's already be nothing for regulators to be complaining about.

	▲	altairprime 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Possibly? I’m not sure anyone’s ever considered it before, since prior to this EU regulation there was nothing directing innovation in this space. I might well be the first to come up with the idea :) Corporations regularly price goods higher than demand in order to delay lowering prices or create artificial scarcity — see gas stations, rental collusion companies, and Prada bags, for example. Charities don’t have to sell clothes received at all to ‘pay’ the donator in tax credits. This law is about forcing corporations to one way or another deliver 100% of their finished goods to end users rather than diverting a massive fraction of that to waste streams, and charities can use clothes up to a point.