Aussie Retailers Lobby For Tax On Online Purchases

An anonymous reader writes "Major Australian retailers are running a print advertising campaign to get the government to decrease the amount where the Goods and Services tax (Australian sales tax) comes into effect for all online purchases. Currently, the tax free amount is at $1000 AUD for online purchases. The retailers, such as Target, Harvey Norman, David Jones, Myer and others, are lobbying through newspapers and are considering launching a television commercial. The print adverts are claiming that if the amount remains the same, Australian jobs will be lost and the economy will be harmed. This is facing a massive backlash from consumers, and the government's assistant treasurer said it was an action by stores to fix the issues affecting them."

Moving the mountain for the trees

[mykos]

Like the digital media producers of the world, these Australian retailers would rather shift the earth than themselves.

Re:Seems unfair to me

[Kalriath]

It's not online retailers, it's overseas retailers. They want to charge tax on all imports, no matter the amount, so that you won't even be able to import a pair of $50 shoes without them taxing it.

Cheaper online even with the tax

[Craigj0]

The reason why people are shopping online is not because they don't have to pay the tax. Even if they did they can still get it cheaper accounting for postage/shipping by shopping online. The tax we are talking about is 10% yet many products you can get for 50% of the Australian price. It seems most retailers in Australia think the exchange rate for AUD/USD is 0.6 (currently at parity).

This isn't just bricks and mortar either:
Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN: AU$20,775.00 or US$11,899

Re:Seems unfair to me

[mjwx]

It seems unfair to have one set of rules for online retailers and another for brick and mortar retailers.

but there isn't. Online Australian retailers operate under the same rules and laws as brick and mortar retailers.

The Australian government realises it does not have power over foreign retailers. The tax free threshold was established to allow cheaper imports and create competition in our stagnant, monopoly dominated retail market.

Read this blog entry of Rulsan Kogan [kogan.com.au] who runs an online store within Australia. Kogan.com.au pays the same taxes and import duties as Harvey Norman but does a much lower volume of sales then HN yet manages a much better price on equivalent (no-name brand) goods.

This is Gerry Harvey and others attempting to foist an artificial barrier to consumer choice and the free market in general. It wont stop at 10% (the GST) because Harvey cant compete with Aussie online retailers, let alone Chinese or US ones.

Re:Seems unfair to me

[antifoidulus]

Having experienced this kind of anal import policies while I was living in Germany, I cannot stress enough how much you want to avoid this. Not necessarily because of the money(10% of a pair of shoes is what, $5?), but because of the stupid hoops they make you jump through just to get access to your own property. I had an electronic dictionary(one they don't even sell in Germany) sent to me from Japan, and instead of getting it in the mail I instead got a notice that I had to go to Nuremberg, which was over an hour away, and they weren't open on weekends and hardly open at all during the weekday. I went there and saw about 10 young employees standing around essentially doing nothing, eventually they said they would send it to my address in the states so I could collect it when I went home. Long story short they fucked me over and sent it back to the dude I bought it from. Fortunately he gave me most of my money back, but the long and short of it is that the German government spent their own money to deny me my property. Fucking brilliant.

Even for people who don't get fucked over like I did have to take a huge chunk out of their day to trudge over to the zollamt, if they could even get any time off when the stupid thing was open(they steal your shit then don't even have the common decency to have reasonable hours), all so you can spend 30 minutes filling out forms so they can collect 5 euros from you. Seriously, this woman who came it at the same time received some sort of figurine from the US, the thing was maybe, MAYBE worth 30 euros and they still made her do all that stupid shit I think she walked out of there paying them about 5 euros. They probably spent more than that just on the "labor", really it's just a massive employment program with some government manager probably getting a nice fat salary because he has to "manage" all those people.

I'm an Australian consumer

[Mr_Plattz]

I'm an Australian consumer and I will happily pay an extra 10% on purchases for GST on behalf of the overseas retailer.

Goods online are, in nearly all instances over 50% cheaper overseas. If I can give 10% of this money to Australia to help support our country I am happy to do so.

Dear Retailers who are involved in this,

Please rest assured I and every other consumer who is outraged at your comments will never shop in your overpriced, monopolized brick and mortar stores ever again. Our AUD has almost doubled in value (54c to 101c vs USD) yet our prices are still increasing.

When you stop buying from China, so will we.