GST on web imports no silver bullet for struggling retailers
Chris Zappone, Sydney Morning Herald
November 16, 2010
Retailers have called for the GST to be levied on goods bought online from overseas retailers in an effort to level the playing field between local and foreign businesses.
But retailers themselves acknowledge that adding the GST would only help the local retail sector marginally in the face of global online competition.
“The internet has created a gigantic pressure machine for many industries, which just bears on prices relentlessly,” said independent publisher Henry Rosenbloom of Melbourne-based Scribe Publications.
“It's a completely indefensible situation where an Australian bookseller is being competed against by an offshore bookseller who doesn't have the same tax obligations,” he said. “That's terribly tough to deal with.”
Australia Post said there was a 24 per cent increase in overseas packages shipped into the country in the three months to October, a period in which the Aussie dollar climbed nearly 13 per cent in value to trade near parity with the greenback.
Full story at SMH.
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