6 ms·

Can someone who knows about tax law explain what the scope of the GST is with regards to imports? I.e. how big of a deal is this? Does everyone who sells item

Can someone who knows about tax law explain what the scope of the GST is with regards to imports? I.e. how big of a deal is this? Does everyone who sells items to Australian purchasers have to pay GST? Or is the GST only applied for some corner cases where, (for example) Australians sell stuff to each other, but involve an oversees leg in the deal? (Edit: this is of course a seperate issue from how blocking capabilities can be abused in future...)

Mao_Zedang 10y ago
It is just a national 10% sales tax.
caf 10y ago
The current situation is that you are required to register and remit GST if you make AUD$75,000 worth of GST-taxable supplies "connected with Australia". This fairly lengthy ruling speaks to what falls under that term: https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=GST/GSTR200031/NAT/ATO/00001 https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=GST/GSTR20003... Currently items under AUD$1000 which aren't alcohol or "bulk orders" are "low-value imports" and aren't taxed, so they don't count in the $75,000 threshold. This is one of the things that's changing in July 2017 - the removal of the low-value threshold. In the current system, if you directly ship goods from outside Australia to the end-customer in Australia it is deemed that the customer is the one that's importing it, and therefore the one responsible for the GST (they're supposed to pay it to Customs). It's not a "supply connected with Australia" and doesn't count in the $75,000 threshold. It sounds like this last provision is changing as well but it's actually hard to find the details on this. There's just high-level descriptions like http://www.budget.gov.au/2016-17/content/bp2/html/bp2_revenue-10.htm http://www.budget.gov.au/2016-17/content/bp2/html/bp2_revenu... .

6 ms·

Can someone who knows about tax law explain what the scope of the GST is with regards to imports? I.e. how big of a deal is this? Does everyone who sells item

by adrianratnapala 10y ago

Mao_Zedang 10y ago
It is just a national 10% sales tax.
caf 10y ago
The current situation is that you are required to register and remit GST if you make AUD$75,000 worth of GST-taxable supplies "connected with Australia". This fairly lengthy ruling speaks to what falls under that term: https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=GST/GSTR200031/NAT/ATO/00001 https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?docid=GST/GSTR20003... Currently items under AUD$1000 which aren't alcohol or "bulk orders" are "low-value imports" and aren't taxed, so they don't count in the $75,000 threshold. This is one of the things that's changing in July 2017 - the removal of the low-value threshold. In the current system, if you directly ship goods from outside Australia to the end-customer in Australia it is deemed that the customer is the one that's importing it, and therefore the one responsible for the GST (they're supposed to pay it to Customs). It's not a "supply connected with Australia" and doesn't count in the $75,000 threshold. It sounds like this last provision is changing as well but it's actually hard to find the details on this. There's just high-level descriptions like http://www.budget.gov.au/2016-17/content/bp2/html/bp2_revenue-10.htm http://www.budget.gov.au/2016-17/content/bp2/html/bp2_revenu... .