@khulu74 wrote:
yes i am asking this, where is the threshold?! These custom exemptions is in every country but Australia now.
To get the answer you're looking for, the question isn't why doesn't Aus have a threshold, but why do the other countries?
The answer is (kind of) two-part.
Part A - in other countries, the cost of the collection method used outweighs the revenue gained by taxing low-value items. If someone buys a $5 item, how many governments would spend several dollars to get ~50c in revenue? Most countries have a collection system where they spend funds and resources to collect taxes and duties before the buyer can take delivery - in the UK, where they have one of the lower thresholds (£15) the buyer has to pay a £9 fee on top of the VAT in order to cover the costs of collection. Thank goodness we didn't get that kind of system (GSP services not withstanding, I guess).
Australia decided to implement the vendor-collects model, which eliminated that problem and meant they (and in turn also means we) don't shell out large adminitration fees for every package processed and received from overseas - businesses who are collecting GST are likely to incur costs and add them into their pricing one way or another, but I doubt it would be anywhere near what we would have been charged per package if they had gone with the collection at the border method with a lowered threshold. They worked out it was not worth the costs to collect GST that way on packages valued under $1000 - think about that for a moment. A package valued at $900 would mean $90 in GST, but it wasn't worth the resources to collect it? It's probably part-testimony to inefficiency of current methods, and part-testimony to the high costs. Other countries have thresholds for these kind of reasons, not because they are granting "rights" to their citizens (it's not like there's a threshold on local goods before GST, or VAT, or sales tax applies).
Part B - There are actually other countries that have imnplemented $0 thresholds on imports. I am willing to bet if more countries adopt the same collection method Australia has, those thresholds would quickly disappear. All EU countries have a vendor-collects model for digital items and services, with a 0 threshold, and there are now at least two US states paying sales tax on every online purchase, from anywhere in the world, with 0 threshold.
