Aussie Retailers Lobby For Tax On Online Purchases 203
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Like the digital media producers of the world, these Australian retailers would rather shift the earth than themselves.
Really what would you have them do? Pack up and move overseas so they can avoid the GST?
For the record GST on overseas purchases alone won't save them, but why should businesses have to compete with a business that faces a different set of tax rules to them?
Re:Moving the mountain for the trees (Score:4, Interesting)
The GST has NOTHING to do with these people not getting sales, the fact that goods vary from 20 to 70% cheaper, yes 70% cheaper overseas tells me / us / Australians that the GST has little to no impact on the price compared to outright greed.
Books especially, online OR retail, overseas is vastly different.
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Sigh. It is not 'outright greed'. It is that doing business in Australia is so incredibly expensive. We have one of the highest average wages in the OECD. On top of that we have payroll tax and compulsory superannaution costs which must also be born by the employer. We have just gone retro with our industrial relations laws (back to the 80s) and union-led wage inflation is already appearing in some areas of our economy. We have one of the highest commercial average rental rates in the world. We have moderately high electricity tarrifs and rapidly climbing water tarrifs. The cost of our internet is also double that of in the States.
All of this feeds through to large operating costs for having an actual retail outlet vs importing direct from overseas. So no, it is not outright greed.
I partially agree with your premise: I run a company in Australia and doing business here is expensive but I don't think it justifies a 200%+ markup on items. In any case the biggest problem here is not the price it's the complete indifference of Australian retailers - they simply aren't interested in helping you, it's all simply a case of import the cheapest, nastiest crap from china and throw it at the customer as you shove them out the door.
Just Aussie? (Score:2)
And if that isn't bad enough, the New Zealand Retail Association thinks it's a great idea - they want the 15% GST to be applied to EVERY purchase, no matter the origin.
The way I see it, they should just stop whining that they don't have it easy any more. You just can't have a 50% margin any more, get over it. Stores should start competing based on their actual merits, such as the ability to get a product to you in less than 2 weeks. And an actual warranty.
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Isn't that the point of a sales tax, to apply to every purchase?
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What they want is actually an import duty.
Which they already have, although it's typically only applied to items over $400 in NZ.
I agree with GP though - the days of huge markups through the whole supply chain are over. That's a good thing for the end customer.
I vote (Score:2)
The big retailers came and close down the mom and pop shops.
Now the big retailers are hurting, and they want to return to profitability by taxing the competition.
Not sure how it can be done economicaly
G
Cheaper online even with the tax (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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More examples:
Just went on Steam Australia store - Call of Duty: Black Ops = $90, look at US store online and it is $60.
Looked on Apple store online - base level Mac Pro in Australia = $3200, in the US Apple store it is $2500.
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Jaycar Electronics must be loving it...
Sadly, Jaycar is starting to carry more and more toys and gadgets too. Thankfully DigiKey and others have their online stores and quick cheap international delivery.
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I'd forgotten about Farnell. Thanks!
GST is only 10% (Score:5, Informative)
The problem Gerry Harvey and co have is not that their goods are 10% more expensive then the equivalent goods online, the problem Harvey and co have is that their goods are 50% more expensive then the equivalent online.
Gerry Harvey's store, Harvey Norman (AKA Hardly Normal [prices]) is one of the stores I refuse to shop at due to it's high prices, incredibly annoying ads and now this. What Harvey really wants is for the government to step in and protect his profits (most of which come from predatory "interest free" deals which have something along the lines of 30% interest applied) by artificially making it more expensive to buy online.
Fortunately our assistant treasurer Bill Shorten has already shot the idea down saying it would be too expensive to implement.
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The problem Gerry Harvey and co have is not that their goods are 10% more expensive then the equivalent goods online, the problem Harvey and co have is that their goods are 50% more expensive then the equivalent online.
Except when was the last time you actually paid the sticker price in a Harvey Norman, Retravision, etc? There is pretty much a cultural expectation in Australia that electrical and whitegoods shops will knock another 15% off the price if you just mutter something like "hmm, what price can you give me if I buy it today"? I have almost always found that you're actually better off looking up an on-line price, then popping into your nearest shop and mentioning it to the salesperson. They will then pop over t
Multiple issues getting bunched together. (Score:2)
The GST issue is actually a non-issue but it's a highly visible one that can be driven hard. As it is, the 10% isn't the cause of the make/break when it comes to retailing. The bigger issue at hand here however is the constant desire we all have to increase our income more and decrease our expenditure (for the same quantity of goods). However, it's a circular system (I won't say closed, since we have inflation) and if you demand more wages then those wages have to come from... PROFIT. What people need
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I can buy unbranded ipod compatible 4 conductor headphones (with mic/switch) for AU$1.50 delivered from Hong Kong.
I can buy functionally identical apple branded headphones from jbhifi for $39 in store.
They're both made in China, and if China can leverage that $1.50(less postage) into jb going bankrupt, then they deserve to do so.
On the other hand, the fridge I bought this afternoon is (mostly) Australian made.
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While all true.
I'm just a regular worker bee and what I've been told and seen since birth is that free trade and globalization is good and it is the future. I won't go into my own views on that... but I've accepted it.
One of the realities of that is you have to accept that an Australian, American, Canadian, European... is no more entitled to a high standard of living than an Indian, Chinese, Brazilian. And so when I see a western manufacturer complain they cannot compete... I say... why should I care more
I am an Australian. (Score:5, Interesting)
This story is a disgrace and the vast vast majority of consumers are utterly disgusted by the actions of these large chains.
We are currently under an oligopoly in Australia for retail options in general and it's mostly getting worse.
I went for the first time overseas recently to Hong Kong, Paris and London and within 2 or 3 days of the holiday, myself and my travel partner were utterly shocked, upset and dismayed at just how /ludicrously/ cheap everything was, clothing, shoes, internet, food - everything was vastly cheaper.
Things have always been traditionally 'gouged' here in regards to pricing, the problem is it's not just the retailers being scumbags, from what I gather the manufacturers, wholesalers and suppliers to the country are bastards too.
Apple for example sell products internationally with no middle man, the Apple stores purchased their goods from Apple asia where they are likely manufactured. The pricing is often not just 5 or 10% more but 20 to 50% more depending on items.
I purchased a pair of identical shoes to a pair I got in Melbourne for $280 in a genuine retail Nike store in Hong Kong for $70, I've looked at them thoroughly, several times over, they really are the genuine item yet the price difference is astounding.
Our dollar has recently gained strength internationally yet goods still don't appear to be getting cheaper in the slightest.
As for the retailers, Aussie retailers are living in the DARK.AGES - they have little to no concept of what an online store is or how to run one and have been laughing up the profits for years, finally the cost of shipping things internationally has continued to drop and the AU$ risen to the point we're going overseas for more and more goods.
I say a plague on all their houses, these people are greedy vermin, threatening Aussie jobs for the sake of (gross amounts) of profit.
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Beyond that, there are other issues. The median Hong Kong resident makes 30% less than the median Australian resident. Of course any item that has wages as a major portion of the product cos
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Ok so one particular item I listed is a bad example - you ignore the book comment, dismiss my post and then go on to insult me.
Yeah,.. ok you're worth bothering with.
Go away. http://slashdot.org/my/logout [slashdot.org]
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Serious question:
Where are you getting milk and bread so cheap? It's at least 25% more for me in Richmond, Victoria.
The right answer (Score:2)
Get rid of sales tax. Then you won't have these market distortions.
Imports != Online Purchases (Score:2)
Current rules will stay (Score:4, Informative)
My experience with importing stuff is that Customs clearance is very quick - same day for most postal articles, a bit longer if you're forced to use Fedex, DHL, etc.
Based on the backlash against retailers, I can't see the government taking a chance at pissing off voters.
It's not just the large chain stores (Score:5, Interesting)
I rarely buy anything locally anymore (except for food) even if it costs me more to buy from overseas. Why? Australian resellers (both traditional and online), distributors and importers are lazy abusive con artists.
Every time I try to order anything locally it's either marked up by an obscene amount (anywhere from 200% to 2000% over the retail price in the US/UK/EU/etc.) or more likely simply unavailable because the local shops and distributors couldn't be fucked carrying anything except the cheapest shitty thing they can import from China.
Email an online store here and ask about a product - 90% of the time you get no reply. Go into a bricks and mortar shop and ask for something and 90% of the time they'll answer by offering you a completely different product. When you tell them that you're after a specific make and model and aren't interested in alternatives more often than not the sales guy will abuse you.
Just today I had another experience of the local bullshit: I wanted to buy some new HDD's (I'd rather buy spinning chunks of rust locally for warranty purposes), I'd settled on the new Hitachi 7K3000 in the 2TB size (note that the 3TB size _is_ available here) so I emailed the three distributors mentioned on the Hitachi site. One bounced (this also happens a lot) one ignored me and the other one said that I'd have to wait at least two more months before they'd be bothered to import them. Best guess as to why: there are probably thousands of the older 7K2000 2TB model sitting in a warehouse in Japan and the local dickheads probably offered to take them at a reduced price from Hitachi all the while still charging the same price to the customer.
This debate has been making headlines here for a few weeks now and the thing I find most ironic is that no one has bothered to suggest that just maybe the GST should be simply abolished - everyone seems to accept the idea that the government sticking its hand in your pocket every time you make a purchase as some kind of natural law. This baffles me: the left should naturally be against it because it disproportionately taxes the poor and the right should be against it because it's a tax that is administered non-voluntarily buy businesses without recompense.
I'm an Australian consumer (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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I don't get why goods are so bloody expensive in Australia. I was there for 6 months in 2009... I wanted to buy the Lonely Planet guide to New Zealand, which was the next destination on my travels. A$45 from the main book shop chain in Melbourne, or A$37 from Amazon in the UK (including probably about $20 AIRMAIL shipping). How the hell can goods be over twice the price, and still considerably more expensive than goods shipped on planes from almost the exact opposite side of the planet? I hear stories l
"jobs will be lost" (Score:2)
Protectionism (Score:2)
The less competitive firms argue for protectionism, rather than offer decent online shopping sites.
I buy from Australian sites when they are worthwhile: when they offer service and choice. I have bought mobile phones and Android tablets from Australian websites, because they had local warranties, faster delivery, and a decent range of items at competitive prices.
With books and CDs, it is often better to buy from overseas, where the range is much wider. And anyway, the books I want are just not available in
Dear retailers (Score:2)
The print adverts are claiming that if the amount remains the same, Australian jobs will be lost and the economy will be harmed.
No, inefficient Australian jobs will be reassigned to other, more efficient sectors of the economy, and thus the Australian economy as a whole will be improved and more efficient.
But yeah, keep crying in the hope that dumb politicians will prop up your obsolete and wasteful business model. There is hope for you, if the MAFIAA are any guid
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No, their claim is essentially correct. It's just that the title and summary is a complete fabrication.
It has nothing to do with "online" is has to do with "overseas". GST (a point of sale tax) isn't applied to personal imports of $1000.
It doesn't matter if you ordered "online" from amazon.com, or picked up the phone and ordered "on telephone", or if you used the postal service to mail a paper order form.
So foreign stores have an advantage over non-foreign stores in that they don't have to add 10% to the pr
Re:Seems unfair to me (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Yeah you're right I should say it's unfair to Aussie online retailers as well, but that's the point the Aussie retailers have to pay GST on any goods they sell you. It's nice not to pay tax, but it would also be nice to have a tax system not structured in such a way that it puts Australian businesses at a disadvantage over their overseas competitors and potentially forces them and the jobs they create off shore.
Either you're charging GST on every purchase or your not.
For the record I don't think this will r
Re:Seems unfair to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah you're right I should say it's unfair to Aussie online retailers as well, but that's the point the Aussie retailers have to pay GST on any goods they sell you. It's nice not to pay tax, but it would also be nice to have a tax system not structured in such a way that it puts Australian businesses at a disadvantage over their overseas competitors and potentially forces them and the jobs they create off shore.
Either you're charging GST on every purchase or your not.
For the record I don't think this will rescue Harvey Norman or Myer or anyone. They're price gouging arseholes, but I don't think the government should be taxing some business and not others.
The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers. How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers. I can think of a few options but each one of them forces me to think be careful what you wish for . What you and the retailers seem to support is not good for anybody at all except for the government.
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And there will still be jobs, but not at the retailers - it's instead at the delivery companies.
However - tax on overseas is already what is applied to products entering Europe. VAT and customs fee is added by the customs office.
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"However - tax on overseas is already what is applied to products entering Europe. VAT and customs fee is added by the customs office."
I don't know where you live, but I haven't paid any VAT and custom online, and I buy a lot outside the EU. The last time I paid VAT online was when I bought a couple of jeans on Compuserve before the Web was invented.
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How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers.
I suppose you could simply tax the packages when they enter the country using something like I dunno... a declared value on the side of the package. Sort of like countries do it now.
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Getting 198 countries to agree on anything is quite difficult.
Not to mention that lots of packages I receive have 'Gift' or 'Specimen without any value' printed on the box.
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They don't have use tax like some other people have to pay? I mean, here in Washington state, if I buy from a retailer who doesn't charge sales tax, I'm liable for the tax still. Although, I'm sure a lot of Washingtonians don't know about it, or don't care if they do (and they probably won't get caught as long as it isn't expensive).
I don't know what Australia is like, but here's an idea...
Could they make things revenue neutral by...
i. Implementing an tax on overseas purchases and,
ii. Lowering the GST so th
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Could they make things revenue neutral by...
i. Implementing an tax on overseas purchases and,
ii. Lowering the GST so things are neutral as before?
Either lowering the percentage, or perhaps exempting some more items to make it a bit more progressive?
The thing is, even though the retailers are blowing a storm about all this, something like less than 3% of all purchases were made online in Australia over the Christmas break and less than 1% of all purchases were from an overseas retailer. To mess with something as complex and far-reaching as the GST for this miniscule amount would be more trouble than it's worth.
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when I visited australia I learned that you guys have an absolutely and compltely utterly insane level of sales tax on anything which isn't food.
books, videos etc cost a minimum of twice as much in AU as my home country in europe.
It's the government scamming you, not the stores.
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10% and the previous regime was a lot different. Software was 0%. Hardware was 22% Luxuries like flavoured milk and cosmetics were ~30%. If you were in the right business you could get a tax exemption by filling in a bunch of paperwork. Computer hardware required two separate registration numbers because people were rorting the first one.
Also note, sales tax is federal. The states get their cut from that 10%.
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I've been wondering about that, as a new migrant to Australia. Would it be legal to set up a store selling imported books or is there some ridiculous grey market thing?
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I stand corrected.
most people I talked to there seemed convinced it was because of taxes but by the sound of it the stores are scamming you guys.
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Imagine sending the state a check every time you bought something online, even if it were for a few dollars. One of the problems is th
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Please, don't export the US tax system. We want it less than you do. Even your statements show that it doesn't work and is unfair... large parts of the rest of the world put the onus on the retailer to collect the taxes. In the case of imports, the carriers (FedEx, postal service, person arriving on a plane, etc) have to work with customs, who charge the taxes. Much better than a voluntary system that is clearly abused.
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The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers.
The retailers have to add 10% GST to their sale price. They get a deduction of GST from their costs. How exactly do they get stuck with paying the GST?
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The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers.
The retailers have to add 10% GST to their sale price. They get a deduction of GST from their costs. How exactly do they get stuck with paying the GST?
Any GST they can't offset they pay to the Government at the end of the quarter.
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The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers. How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers.
Now you need to be careful with your definitions here - I know what you mean though... The consumer does end up paying the GST as they're the end user of the good or service. This GST is collected by the retailer at the point of purchase and paid to the Government. (input credits not withstanding etc...)
What they're proposing is that Customs will hold any imported goods and levy a 10% GST on them before you're allowed to receive them.
There's a very good reason why the Government doesn't do this already, and
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Yet, by them making a big deal about it, and them complaining how cheap stuff is online, that's like the perfect endorsement for online shopping. Idiots!
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How exactly does the consumer avoid paying sales tax? If you go into a shop and buy something the price includes tax on top of what ever mark-up the retailer puts on. Sales tax in the UK just went up from 17.5% to 20% and all retailers are passing that on to the consumer, even if they try to mask it with sales and offers.
Taxing overseas purchases is done with import duty and sales tax on imported items. The consumer pays the taxes.
Taxation really needs to be sorted out by going back to the principals rather
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The specific problem in the UK comes from European law. VAT is covered by a treaty so that you can buy VAT-paid goods in one EU country and bring them to another without having to pay VAT in the destination. This is intended to gradually harmonise VAT rates, since it means that a country with a high VAT rate will lose out to imports from its neighbours. Signatories were allowed to keep their existing VAT exemptions, but are not allowed to add new ones without permission from Brussels.
(This post has som
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The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers. How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers. I can think of a few options but each one of them forces me to think be careful what you wish for . What you and the retailers seem to support is not good for anybody at all except for the government.
Whoops. Me thinks you hav e no understanding of how our GST works. At the end of the day, the final consumer or purchaser of the goods *always* pays the 10% GST.
When a retailer or any wholesalers purchase any item, they pay 10% GST on that item.
When they on-sell the item (be it wholesale or retail), they charge the next person in the chain 10% GST. They then claim the 10% they paid back and pass on the difference to the Grubbermint.
For anyone involved in manufacture, wholesale, or retail, GST is so much eas
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The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers. How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers. I can think of a few options but each one of them forces me to think be careful what you wish for . What you and the retailers seem to support is not good for anybody at all except for the government.
And where exactly is your problem here?
I am German, our VAT is generally 19% on all purchases, in stores and on the internet. Where non-physical goods like software downloads are sold from foreign retailers to German customers, foreign retailers have to collect the tax for the German state - and they do so, to save their customers the hassle of tax fraud investigations (a whole different issue here: German tax authorities can investigate your bank account at any time).
Where physical goods enter the country,
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They could charge an import tax, the same as they already do for imports over $AU 1000.
The problem with doing this, aside from pissing off consumers, is that, unless you want to go for voluntary declarations the way out of state online purchases in the US (don't) work, it costs more money to collect the import tax on a $100 order than it actually generates. That would mean that this whole thing would turn into a government subsidy for Australian retailers. Nothing necessarily wrong with that governments sub
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DealExtreme is actually a really good example of this problem, in that everything I've ordered from them has had a fraudulent customs declaration (either too low value, or 'gift'). I've considered trying to remedy it, and I'm sure that correcting it would be simple, but it requires me to get off the couch to pay someone money for something I already have, so the motivation isn't very strong and I end up forgetting.
In theory, they should already be collecting tax on overseas purchases. In practice, there's
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I haven't checked the prices, but DealExtreme http://dealextreme.com/ [dealextreme.com] has some insane prices.
Every price you see on the site there is in USD and INCLUDES international shipping anywhere in the world.
I think the only way they can do it is by being subsidised by the Chinese Government.
I've quite literally bought items off that site for a couple of dollars and had them turn up in my post box 7-10 days later. I'm amazed, so much so that when I've had issues with the products (and at those prices you can't hones
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I honestly don't know how they do it. And then in this thread I've also been pointed to http://www.goodluckbuy.com/ [goodluckbuy.com] which seems to be a similar deal, only they list prices in AUD if you want...
Re: DX - don't expect everything you buy to be exactly as advertised - read the comments threads. Don't expect much in the way of customer support too - it never hurts to try, but sometimes you won't get very far... Take it for what it's worth!
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And, if you're looking for similar stuff, plus a lot of more "techie" items, then try out GoodLuckBuy.com [goodluckbuy.com].
Like DX, they include shipping in all their (very low) prices.
My only question is: who on earth chose that name?
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Bingo! This is exactly why they don't collect GST on purchases from overseas, and why when you buy something big, they do hold it in customs till you cough up.
The Government exempting online purchases with less than $100 GST collectable isn't because they're all warm and fuzzy and want to give us a good deal. It's because it would cost more than the GST amount to collect it.
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Here in New Zealand, any consignment which would attract a GST tax of less than NZ$50 is not taxed because collection costs would exceed the $50 to be collected.
However, when GST was recently increased from 12.5% to 15%, they also added an extra fee so that if your package does attract $50 or more of GST, you're also hit with about (from memory) another $28 or so as a "biosecurity fee" or something similar.
How on earth they deduce that only goods that have $50 or more of GST payable might represent a threat
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I have had friends who've imported $1,000 RC model aircraft that are 30% of full size. These arrive in *huge* boxes and include the 55cc engine.
Are you guys starting an airline or something? If not that then maybe your UAVs could be used to evade Australian GST.
Re:Seems unfair to me (Score:5, Interesting)
You know who it's really unfair to?
The taxpayer, who has to pick up the tab for the implementation and border enforcement - of the 20c tax on a $2 cable. Because I'll tell you one thing for free, the overseas retailers won't be collecting and remitting it. Why should they? They've got their own tax laws to ensure compliance with. You start expecting online retailers to comply with taxes in every single country on the planet they sell to, and you're looking at compliance costs jumping up by orders of magnitude. Guess what? Then you're in a situation where online retailers are at a hundred fold disadvantage to brick and mortar stores. So your only option is customs charging it at the border.
There's a reason that governments only charge sales tax on expensive overseas purchases - the administrative cost of charging tax (including biosecurity vetting, staffing costs, storage, payment administration, and all sorts of other expenses). And for bonus points, you have to charge different amounts of tax based on the origin (Free Trade Agreements, or at least ones as one sided as US Free Trade Agreements, tend to forbid charging more tax than the other country charges on imports). So then US online retailers have an advantage over any others. Yay!
I personally feel that anyone who supports this tax probably works for a large Australian (or New Zealand, which tends to mean Australian anyway) retailer. So which one are you?
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You cant always blame the retailer. Sometimes its the local wholesaler/importer who is gouging the Aussie market.
Take for example Burton snowboarding gear. Its much more expensive to walk into a store and buy here (even after accounting for GST and freight costs) than it is to walk into a store in the US and buy the same product.
Same thing with LEGO sets. I can walk into a store in the US and buy the latest LEGO police station for US$100 (or even less if I was to buy from a US online retailer or find it fro
Re:Seems unfair to me (Score:4, Interesting)
You've nailed this one.
When I can purchase something from overseas for quite literally half the retail price here in Australia, then add a bit of shipping and it's still significantly cheaper, I'd actually be happy to pay another 10% on top as it's STILL cheaper than purchasing the item here in Oz.
This leads to the situation of some large brand names - Canon and Nikon spring to mind, that take advantage of their market position to do everything they can to kill the grey market. If you buy, for example, a Canon DSLR here in Australia, if it's a grey market import (ie, not imported directly by Canon Australia) then Canon will not only refuse to service it under warranty (fair enough I suppose as the product doesn't have an international warranty) but they will actively refuse to perform any work on it whatsoever, even if you want to pay to have it serviced. If it's not an Oz serial number they simply will not touch it.
Now, this is a big deal as I can get a Canon EOS 5D MkII camera body in the USA for $2499 (I'm assuming for the purpose of this exercise that $1AUD = $1USD)
Were I to purchase that very same camera here in Australia, from Canon, for $3599. If I were to turn to eBay instead and get one from Hong Kong, I can get this very same camera for $2300 with free shipping.
Well-respected USA online store: http://www.adorama.com/ICA5DM2.html [adorama.com]
Canon Australia: http://www.canon.com.au/en-AU/For-You/Digital-Cameras/EOS-Digital-SLR-Cameras/5D [canon.com.au]
There have even been times where if you wanted a mid-range or high-end MacBook Pro, it'd be cheaper to fly to the USA, walk into an Apple store, buy the computer and fly home than it would have been to purchase the same machine here in Australia.
The pattern to really high local prices seems to be when the parent company controls the importation and distribution, we all get reamed.
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There have even been times where if you wanted a mid-range or high-end MacBook Pro, it'd be cheaper to fly to the USA, walk into an Apple store, buy the computer and fly home than it would have been to purchase the same machine here in Australia.
If I could cover my expenses and spend a week at the beach, I'd volunteer to cram two suitcases with laptops and fly to Australia.
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So IMHO, Gerry Harvey o
Re:Seems unfair to me (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Seems unfair to me (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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First off, when you pretend to be Australian, step number one is use En_AU
Flat out wrong. Gerry does understand that a lot of retail is going online, what he doesn't realise is his business model needs to change in order to remain competitive. Already most Australian's would rather shop at other retailers
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His stated reasons are: [abc.net.au]
"Retail giants Myer, David Jones and Target also want the threshold removed, saying the Government has a responsibility to keep profits and jobs in Australia."
So it's the governments job to keep profits in Oz, when these are the retailers who sold manufacturing to China.
All this aside, what Harvey and co are proposing is nothing less then protectionism, w
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Mod Parent Up. (Score:2)
A lot of this
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Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt, what he's basically saying is that brick and mortar stores are a very inefficient and expensive way to provide goods to people. Rather than improve their efficiency or allow the market to kill off the old and no longer useful ways, we should artificially inflate the cost of more efficient methods of providing goods to people, so that all the methods we have available are equally inefficient.
From a short-term perspective, keeping the jobs etc. sounds good. Long-t
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On the face of it you'd be right, but the issue isn't that simple. A previous government set the GST thresholds to increasingly higher levels in the first few years after the GST introduction because they realised it was costing more to enforce the tax on these small imports than they were taking in.
The retailers are effectively asking for the government to put up artificial roadblocks for online shoppers. Since overseas retailers aren't going to collect taxes for the Aussie government the only way to work
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GST is a furphy and anyone capable of doing the numbers would see that. Few do
And even fewer seem to care. This whole campaign by a few rich merchants has been met with an almost universal "piss off."
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You obviously don't understand GST credits. If I buy something at $40 wholesale and pay $4 in GST, when I sell it to you for $50 + $5 GST, I give the government $1 and claim a GST credit for the other $4 - it's not like the old wholesale taxes.
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To be 100% fair. Video Game prices in OZ are set by the distributors, not Harvey Norman, JB Hifi or EB games (but JB Hifi is consistently $10-20 cheaper then HN or EB). OzGameShop does grey imports (legal) on a case by case basis (I.E. per order, which is also legal). Basically they order the games from Asia/UK/US when
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Rhodes & Bechett [myer.com.au] - Australian brand in an Australia retail store (who knows Rhodes & Bechett [rhodesbeckett.com.au] outside Australia?) - $AU 899
1 Australian dollar = 0.9929 U.S. dollars
Make the math, please.
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I'd agree with that if both of them had the same taxes but they don't. One has a sales tax from 0$ on up; the other has zero sales tax up to 1k$. What they ought to do is do away with all sales tax and replace it with something else that isn't so hostile to the poor.
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The retailers in Australia collect GST from us (the consumer) and pay it to the Government.
The Australian Government has no control over retailers overseas and can not compel them to pay any tax at all.
All Australian retailers (online and physical) have exactly the same taxes to collect and pay to the Government.
Overseas retailers don't, if the Government wanted to collect GST for amounts less than $100 in one transaction, they would need to have EVERY SINGLE parcel from overseas held in customs for the end
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Except that isn't what they are asking for. The tax would be applied by customs (just like they apply all the other import duties) upon import - no store would need to know about it at all.