31–40 of 44 posts
The move is a response to a new GST policy that will apply 10% tax to all overseas purchases under $1,000 announced by the Turnbull government last year in a bid to “level the playing field” between Australian and overseas retailers.
Why not collect the tax rather than banning Australians?
It saddens me a bit that this may become the new norm for the internet.
It saddens me a bit that this may become the new norm for the internet.
It saddens you that all retailers selling to customers in the same place have the same tax collection rules applied to them?
It saddens me a bit that this may become the new norm for the internet.
Didn't noticed the same thing with shops in UK or France tho.
Edit: grammar
The move is a response to a new GST policy that will apply 10% tax to all overseas purchases under $1,000 announced by the Turnbull government last year in a bid to “level the playing field” between Australian and overseas retailers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not collect the tax rather than banning Australians?
Presumably complying with the import tax is a PITA. Import/export usually is. Certainly it's more work than adding a redirect. There may also be some organizational lines being crossed; I can imagine the American site team doesn't really want to deal with Australian tax issues.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What part of companies complying with local tax law saddens you? If Amazon, or anyone else for that matter, wants access to the Australian market then they need to abide by the tax regulations as dictated by Australia. If it's the tax itself that considered off putting, that's up to Australians to decide (i.e. local protectionism / profit capture v.s. lower prices and higher global imports).
I grew up in Canada and in the 70's and 80's when I ordered something from the US or elsewhere, it would be shipped to me and I would get a notice in the mail that a package was waiting for me along with the amount of taxes that I owed. That's a nice way to handle it because I could order from anywhere in the world and every small vendor across the planet didn't need to understand Canadian tax codes. I suspect if all…
We still have your exact system in the UK (and rest of EU?) it kills my desire to import unless the price is vastly different. Anything from non-EU countries above £15 gets hit with 20% VAT & an admin fee (£8 I think!).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It saddens you that all retailers selling to customers in the same place have the same tax collection rules applied to them?
But instead of applying the tax rules they simply decided to not sell to Australia anymore. I believe OP is sad about the accelerating move to a more fragmented internet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've occasionally run across European online retailers while looking to buy something online and sometimes the prices are even attractive before you see what the shipping costs. They've never flat out told me "You can't order from here because you're in the US." Cell phones and videos have service and licensing problems that physical goods don't run into, so geographic limits on those is less surprising.
Its not that you "can't order from amazon". Its that there's a geo-blocked/redirected domain which australians will be shown which adjusts prices and collect sales tax. As an Australian, being geoblocked and having prices dynamically changed/adjusted based upon my IP address is extremely old-hat since half the internet already does it...GST or not... Edit: although, as an australian, there ARE a whole host of service…