[LINK] GST on internet sales

Wed Nov 27 19:21:15 AEDT 2013

Actually, the logic is pretty reasonable if you're a retailer:

1. Get the GST whacked back on overseas Internet purchased goods, irrespective of the economics of collecting it.

2. To ensure that the GST is paid on the goods now imported, institute a centralised system of bonded warehouses at various inconvenient points around the country, where goods will be held until the tax is paid.

3. Implement the most torturous GST assessment process that can possibly be done, to ensure that the goods are locked up in the bonded warehouses for the maximum time possible, to ensure that the sheer volume of goods held in the bonded warehouses builds up to unmanageable proportions, and to ensure that naturally occurring mistakes (goods lost, goods damaged in transit, good wrongly delivered etc etc) occur ... thereby removing one the  major attractions of the online model.

4. As the system slowly breaks down, ensure that a 'user pays' regime is installed to cover the added costs now imposed on government to collect this tax. This should approximate 60% of the imported value of the goods imported, and boost the prices to within a bulls roar of what the Australian retailers with their obsolete 'bricks 'n mortar' model charge anyway.

5. Rely in the fact that Australian online (overseas goods) consumers will eventually get jack of the delays, the mistakes, the user pays regime, the bureaucracy and the sheer bloody minded aggravation that seems to be being imposed on them by their government ... and will in all likelihood return to the bricks and mortar fold.

This would work except for the facts that:

a) It rules out the inroads that major AUSTRALIAN online businesses have made into the 'bricks 'n mortar' market. I mean, if I was oo.com, or Kogan or Rivers or whoever was doing online right in Australia, I'd make whoopee as disgruntled overseas buying consumers made a beeline in my direction. (As an aside, I do 95% of my online buying at Australian sites with Australian traders ... only rarely and when it absolutely isn't available here to I go to overseas sites.)

b) It assumes that the Australian consumer will 'forgive and forget' about the major Australian retailers plugging the overseas 'hole'. In all likelihood consumer resentment will accelerate the move away from 'bricks 'n mortar' rather than stem it.

c) The advantages of online (and overseas online) are price, delivery to the door, no suspect 'charges' and 'fees' for using credit cards and the like, more extensive product choice (vastly more online than in a 'bricks 'n mortar' store), more current product choice (all the latest and greatest), product availability (you know at the time of purchase whether its available for shipping, rather than being told by the store that you'll have to wait a few weeks for shipping), 24/7 operation, at-home and instant customer service ... much more convenient than limited shopping hours at remote locations, and probably a few I've missed. The point is that these are attributes and advantages that Australian 'bricks 'n mortar' retailers fail to inject into ANY transaction with them.

'Bricks 'n mortar' is an obsolete business model that involved a measure of inconvenience, huge mark-ups to cover the fixed and ongoing operational costs, poor product choice, poor service, a widely accepted (in Australian retail) incremental fee structure that's guaranteed to irritate (fees for paying, for example), and a penchant for milking the consumer rather than adding value, that overseas visitors (from Europe, the States and Asia) can't believe.

Retailers in Australia have forgotten that their role in the whole commerce thing is to be a middle-man. They've forgotten that the only economic justification for being part of any given transaction is to ADD VALUE. Instead, they have gotten away with subtracting value, and charging their clientele like wounded bulls for the privilege.

Well, now the consumer is aware that different models exist ... overseas and with 'e-tailers' here in Oz, and the likelihood of us returning to the walled in, protected, inefficient, hopelessly outmoded, obsolete and expensive bricks 'n mortar model is minimal. 

If the government could pick any one of a number of ways to irritate the Australian people ... from defending politician's 'entitlements' and the abuse of same, to installing a 10th rate broadband network that won't sell for a fraction of the competing design when they want to privatise it, to abandoning election promises six weeks after an election, to deeming everything they do 'secret' (in an age when if anything has been proven, governments no longer have the ability to keep anything secret), to embarrassing diplomatic faux pas with neighbours, to supporting child molestors and the organisations which tolerated and encouraged them ... well you get the idea ... this would be the one calculated to make the average bogan and voter more irritated than any other. Because they are the ones who will be hit in the hip pocket, and with the inconvenience and bureaucracy of the processes and procedures that will no doubt be put in place to run this turkey.

Just my 2 cents worth ---
----
On 27 Nov 2013, at 1:29 pm, Michael <mike at bystander.net> wrote:

> I don't follow the logic on this one.
> Collecting GST on inbound individual parcels is costly. Presumably many
> dollars per item, if the $1000 threshold is reasonable.
> The retailers are asking the government to spend this collection money to
> tax the customers, resulting in consumers/tax-payers being worse off.
> Retailers have little evidence to show that GST collection will impact O/S
> purchases. One would think that international shipping would negate any
> savings from GST, but apparently retailers are unable to compete even with
> that advantage.
> Is the government here to serve the people or vested business interests?
> Regards,
> Michael Skeggs
> 
> 
> 
> On 27 November 2013 13:06, Marghanita da Cruz <marghanita at ramin.com.au>wrote:
> 
>>> Retail groups say lowering the threshold will help Australian business
>> to compete with overseas shopping websites on price, and net the Government
>> an additional $1 billion in GST revenue each year.
>>> 
>>> However, doubts remain about whether the cost of collecting the tax will
>> exceed the amount of revenue raised.
>>> 
>>> At today's meeting, Treasury officials presented a range of options for
>> lowering the threshold.
>>> 
>>> Queensland Treasurer Tim Nicholls says the states will examine the
>> proposals in more detail.
>>> 
>>> "It does show in the first year or two that the costs of collection are
>> higher than the revenue generated, but then the trend gets much more
>> positive the longer you go," he said.
>>> 
>>> "Online retail sales are growing at 15 per cent per annum. It is a
>> growing and significant distribution channel for sales at the moment in
>> terms of the GST system."
>>> 
>>> He says there is no clear agreement among states about a new level for
>> the GST threshold.
>> 
>> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-27/treasurers-pushing-for-gst-changes-at-meeting-with-joe-hockey/5119218
>> --
>> Marghanita da Cruz
>> Ramin Communications Pty Ltd
>> http://ramin.com.au/
>> Phone:(+61)0414-869202
>> 
>> 
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