@snowbeast08 wrote:
I am a little confused on this one .
to the best of my knowledge gst is not applicable on used goods for personel use .should we not only be paying gst on the service portion that ebay provides probably 10% of the paypal fee as that is the fee for the service that ebay provides. the idea of paying gst on goods that ebay doesnt own seems i little bit illegal to me .if the australian government want ebay to collect gst on there behalf to make the retail industry have a level playing field than gst should only be applicable to new goods as the used goods market is not subject to gst unless those goods are used for business purposes .can anyone give me a ligitimate reason other than it was simpler for ebay to implement this way .any insight appreciated.
Hi snowbeast08, welcome to the board. Up until this year, July, we weren't charged GST on second hand items we purchased overseas via ebay. Now we are! The obscentity of this unfair tax is that many of the people we buy second hand items from in the US are ordinary men and women just selling their unwanted / no longer used items. I am dead against the GST a as a whole as I know it came in to make revenue after state owned assets were privatised. A certain so-called pm lied and said he wouldn't being it in. I won't discuss that here.
Even though I find GST unpalatble and hideous, I would say that if any type of GST would be applicable on ebay transactions, it should be just 10% of the fee value the seller has to pay to ebay, not the item! Tell me this ...... ...
* If you buy a lawnmower from your neighbour in a private transaction, should you have to pay GST on that?
* If you go to the US and buy some second hand things in swap meets, garage sales and flea markets, should you then pay GSTto the Australian govt when you come back? Now those 2nd hand items items could be an Elvis Presley tee shirt, a 1960s clock, some James Brown LPs, a collectable bottle opener, a multimeter and a pair of Adidas sunning shoes.
I say no!
Again, many of the transactions here are between ordinary folk in the US and ordinary folk here. Ebay is the platform that these items are sold via. Tax should be on that, not the items.
