gst threshold on overseas online shopping

Yeah ?. I thought the buzz was going the other way ?. GST on more online sales currently exempt ?. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/71203435/buyers-set-to-pay-gst-on-overseas-online-services-by-christmas From chat, you'll still get stuff way cheaper from overseas than off the street here ?. edit- RNZ has a better article :) "(The Govt) is currently losing an estimated $180 million of revenue to online purchases, a figure that is rising every year, and plans to extend GST to all online purchases to patch up the ever-widening hole in revenue. Prime Minister John Key said GST on some online purchases could be in place by Christmas. "I think you should have to pay for online services, and in fact there's about 12 jurisdictions around the world that do that, including Europe, so it's a well-trodden path and it actually works," said Mr Key." http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/281655/buyers-set-to-pay-gst-on-online-services

@Pro-active "Yeah ?. I thought the buzz was going the other way ?. GST on more online sales currently exempt ?. " I think you misunderstood @waynowski. "Aus has announced they are going to drop the threshold price for gst on online overseas shopping , possibly to zero." Key point is they are going to drop the threshold for charging GST, therefore GST will become payable.

their threshold is currently a thousand dollars , they are looking at charging gst for everything

@scottie. Yeah, yeah. I always read the original post (OP) before jumping into a thread. Govts looking at the whole GST online thing. ".... And I anticipate that Cabinet will get a series of recommendations in the later part of this year, probably by the end of October, and then we will be able to report back on our steps there." http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/281638/government-weighs-up-online-gst-options Waynowski started with one particular angle. That's cool !. From what I read, different things would be implemented at different times. I understand dropping NZ's freebie threshold & applying GST to online things currently exempt are being considered, amongst other things. However it goes, some things are still going to be much cheaper online than price tag on an NZ shelf. Milk's down, petrol's down - I'd sooner Govt simply cover the online transaction loophole than, say, an increase in existing tax, increased charges or decreased services.

What an appropriate topic. I just bought a camera online from a .co.nz website. But it turns out it's based in Hong Kong. I don't buy many things, especially online. So I'm naive to this stuff. Well let's say I was oblivious to gst,duty, processing fees etc. So I'm spewing my $630 camera has blown out by $175. 100 gst. 50 processing by customs and 25 from the international courier. My camera is still stuck in customs while the website,customs and courier battles it out. I'll chalk this up to experience. Though I hope to get the camera before my family leaves for our month long trip through Southeast Asia

Isn't NZ only putting it on services at this point, and not on goods? I figured it's just a political response to behind-the-scenes lobbying from giants like Spark who want to compete with the likes of Netflix on more level terms, and so in effect it's probably only going to be the giant overseas services which are pressured into adding GST to their services sold to NZrs. The idea paying GST on imports doesn't bother me too much anyway, if it can be done cleanly at the border somehow. It's always been a tax loophole which only exists because of the difficulty of collecting. My bigger concern is if it ends up being a mess for collecting it, like what @Gaiters has just described. I'm also not a fan of somehow making businesses operating completely outside NZ's jurisdiction collect GST for the NZ government, certainly no more than I like the idea of it happening the other way around with overseas governments pressuring NZ businesses to collect tax for them. I don't even understand how that's meant to work. That seems to be how modern governments like to solve this problem, however.

There was an interview on the radio with Pom businesses over their experience of the EU's move to collect GST/VAT on everything. Similar approach to that described above: retailer has to collect the GST for every country they export to at the rates and rules specified by the destination country (many of which themselves have multiple GST rates on different products). The bare-minimum cost for the resulting accountancy services to process the combined paperwork for all 28 states was about GBP2000 per year. For many craft and home-based businesses that was a very large proportion of their profits, and effectively forced them to sell through third-party mutinationals like Amazon who would handle it all for them. And that was with one, centralised processing system, though applying the various different rules for each destination member state. Imagine how it would be for multiple independent states like NZ, where retailers had to do completely separate paperwork for each. Unworkable for small businesses. So all we achieve is further opening the market for the mega-businesses like Amazon by eliminating the smaller competition. What would be much more efficient is for the country-country tax transaction to be done once, at the government-government level. Always tax sales at the rate of the supplying country paid to the supplying government. As a business, declare in your tax return the value of sales to each overseas country. And have the tax offices responsible for the resulting reconciliation of who owes what to who as a single transaction at the end of the year. This has worked well for the international telecom's industry for decades (who gets paid what for international calls). Countries that try to free-ride by having no sales tax don't get to join the scheme and are subject to the equivalent duties at the border. Job done.