@a_j_australia wrote:
YES. , Thats what happened to me. How can you be charged GST on an amount you aren't paying. Only $4.50 was charged to you, you paid $4.50 so how cane bay charge Bay on the 50cents they didn't collect from you. If a Store offers me $20 off a $100 RRP , I only pay GST on the $80 I hand over, not the $100. Seems wrong by Ebay.
People keep missing the key point here - you can't compare this scenario to goods purchased in Australia because the implementation of the GST is very different for imports. Secondly, if an Australian store chooses to provide a $20 discount on one of their items, it reduces their GST obligation for that sale because they received less money for it.
When someone uses an eBay voucher to help pay for one of my items, I still receive the full cost and therefore my GST obligation remains unchanged. If I use a voucher when buying something overseas from eBay, the GST obligation is not reduced because the full price is paid, and if anyone actually sat down and thought about how GST on imports had to be implemented, and how eBay could in turn implement a co-payment system (which is what vouchers are) that also reduces the GST for the buyer, they'd realise why this is not feasible (for one, eBay opted for the simplified collection model, which means they can't claim GST credits, so why would they pay any of it?)
This logic (eBay discounted the price, so they should discount the tax, too), just doesn't work. In my previous example of a $3000 item where a 10% voucher was used, I would be very interested to know whether or not customs would accept someone saying "oh, but I used an ebay discount voucher for the price, so you need to discount my GST obligation as well".
