Wednesday, November 25, 2015

New Zealand to Tax E-Books from Overseas Retailers

Shelf Awareness

Beginning in October 2016, the New Zealand government will collect a 15% goods & services tax on e-books and other digital products purchased online from overseas retailers, Books+Publishing reported. The move follows an August announcement that Australia "would apply a 10% GST to all goods purchased online from July 1, 2017, after earlier announcing it would extend the GST to digital downloads."

Saying that the legislation "goes only halfway to rectifying the GST problem with foreign retailers and benefits only big businesses engaged in selling videos, music and e-books," Booksellers NZ CEO Lincoln Gould called for the GST to be extended to physical products. "It does not help small retailers, such as bookshops, that face an ever-increasing uneven playing field, where they have to collect GST for the government on the sale of small value goods, while the offshore online retailer does not... This will mean that Amazon, for instance, will be required to collect GST on the sale of an e-book, or an audiobook to a New Zealand purchaser, but not on the sale of a printed book."

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