New Zealand’s online GST introduction
How do you think this will affect small online purchases via Gearbest, Zapals and others? Sounds like the current thresholds on minor purchases may now be done away with.
Offshore GST Collection 1st Oct 2016
Jay on 30/08/2016 - 13:59
Comments
If it is going to be based on whether there is a NZ delivery address, perhaps may be more difficult.
Effective 1 October 2016, amendments to the New Zealand Goods and Services Tax (“GST”) legislation will require Amazon Web Services, Inc. (“AWS”) to charge GST at 15% to New Zealand based non-GST registered customers.
Again though, none of these actually require a legitimate delivery address. Not condoning anyone trying to work around it, but it's still pretty simple to.
For purely digital content perhaps. But the new rules seem to apply to any online purchase requiring delivery to a NZ address, or payment from a NZ bank account.
@Jay:
Really? That's not how I read it, I may be wrong though.
On this date a goods and services tax (GST) at a rate of 15% will be added to the supply of online services (such as software and music downloads) to New Zealand residents from an offshore supplier.
suggests that it doesn't include items physically crossing the border yet, just digital content.
“Collecting GST from the growing volume of online sales across borders has been an issue of growing concern for some time, so the passing of this legislation marks a very important first step.,
Which I guess is the guts of the question. Are 'online sales' just referring to downloadable content, or indeed, any online sales? Or if for now, just digital content, the 'first step' comment suggests that further measures are afoot.
The other aspect we find spurious is whether systems are in place to validate that any GST collected is in fact passed on to the NZ Govt. For as many anon purchasers out there, there's nearly as many 'anon' offshore suppliers.
We can't seem to effectively validate the quality of steel that goes into critical infrastructure. How the hell do we validate XYZ Corporation in Shanghai met their corporate responsibilities regarding $20 of software.
@Jay:
Therein lies the problem, right? The current system works, and it works pretty well. By trying to change it to increase monetisation, they are going to be hugely decreasing efficiency, and massively increasing costs, to both consumers and customs. Collecting GST on digital orders from large overseas retailers might work, but it's never going to be an all encompassing system, there is no way to ensure that every single offshore entity selling digital goods (Or physical at a later date?) is going to be following the system put in place. Then the question is, how does (I'm assuming) IRD ensure that the GST is being paid back correctly? Sure, large corporates will likely not have a problem managing that, but it'll never work for smaller, remote, companies.
Oh yes, I mentioned this to you once before Shaw. All items will be taxed starting from this date. Gah!
Amazon with youshop just got a whole heap better, faster delivery, cheaper ext..
How so?
I believe it would still be faster + you can get them to put a lower value or gift on the package thus lowering/advoiding gst
Interesting, although doesn't this just apply to digital products?
Can think of a thousand ways to get around it, if really wanting to.