4channel, it seems clear that the general tenor here is that the added GST component for imported goods with a value that's lower than $1000 is not welcome.
I doubt that any buyer likes it.
It's also clear that no one here likes the way that the legislation has made platforms like eBay the ones who collect that GST, since that effectively negates the whole "No GST for sellers whose annual turnover in Australian sales is lower than AUD 75,000". It doesn't seem fair. That is agreed.
The legislation has obviously been drafted in that way to force the largest possible compliance with that legislation. It would almost certainly not be possible to police thousands of small-ish overseas sellers and force them to register for GST collection. By adding the EDP (Electronic Distribution Platform) clause, it simplifies the whole thing; eBay and a few other similar sites can be easily identified as EDPs and told to comply. You'll remember that Amazon (its international sites) refused to comply, which is why Australians can't buy from Amazon.com for instance unless they specify a delivery address that isn't Australian.
The legislation's also been drafted in such a way as to avoid the possibility of Australians buying from international sellers but selecting an overseas forwarding address to avoid paying GST where it would otherwise be payable. If the GST isn't collected by the seller, or by the EDP, then the shipping forwarder must collect it.
You will say - and I agree - that as GST is excluded from being payable when we buy from sellers who are under that $75,000 turnover to Australian buyers, it shouldn't be collected when we do buy low-value imported goods from such sellers. TRUE. But because of the EDP caveat, that somewhat cancels out those exceptions, because - in spite of eBay, for instance, clearly stating that they are not the seller, the legislation effectively treats them as the supplier for the purposes of determining whether or not GST is payable AND for the purposes of collecting that GST.
Is that unfair? YES. I don't like it; you don't like it; no one here likes it. But it's the legislation. That legislation could have been drafted in any of several ways... the responsibility of collecting the GST could have been put upon Customs, but as you'd be aware (I'm sure), that may have ended up being so expensive to implement and run that the costs would have outweighed the collected GST. Not only that, but we'd have seen the process of importing goods become ridiculously clogged up, as bad as a permanent traffic jam with barely a trickle of movement.
So - rather than just let it go and keep the requirement for GST on imported goods payable only where the goods were $1000 or more - the legislators thought and thought, and came up with the current plan.
We can STILL comply with the legislation and AVOID paying GST on low value imported goods. It's just that we can't do that if we buy through an EDT (eBay, for example). (Or if "the customer is a business who provides you their Australian business number (ABN) and states that they are GST registered".)
So... if we buy rare car parts from overseas, or collectable items from overseas, or antiques from overseas, or DVDs or CDs from overseas, or cookware from overseas, or dinner services from overseas, or butter knives from overseas, or so on... we can still avoid paying GST without breaking the law. How? Make sure that you buy from an overseas seller directly, where the seller isn't registered for GST collection. Make sure, also, that the overseas seller sends directly to you, rather than shipping the item to a forwarding company.
If you buy from such an overseas seller directly, it becomes irrelevant whether the item you buy is new or second-hand. Either way, you won't be committing tax evasion.
If the legislation is rewritten in the future, who knows? Perhaps we'll see eBay not required to collect GST where the actual seller is under the $75,000 threshold for Australian buyers. But I very very very much doubt it. Similarly, irrespective of how much you'd like it to be true, there isn't an exception for second-hand goods (and never has been), so I don't think we will see such an exception written into the legislation. We can cry and scream about it being greed on the part of the government - and that might be true. Is there any government in the world that doesn't collect as much as it can in taxes? Of course some of that taxation is ploughed back into the services and assistance the government must provide for its citizens...
I'm not for one moment suggesting that some government expenditure is outrageous and unjustified. But I don't think that any of the political parties would - if in power - change the GST requirement to make low value imported goods GST-free again. I think we are stuck with it. I think that the only way to deal with it is to choose wisely when purchasing from overseas. That might mean buying a little less; it might mean finding sellers with their own websites or who are in selling groups on Facebook or whatever it may be. It's certainly never been easier for sellers to set up their own websites and collect international payments. Hobby group forums can provide a nexus.
But for goods where one needs a warranty, or where a safety standard is involved, I hope we - the Australian consumers - won't see a general collapse of small businesses in Australia to the point that our local choices are drastically compressed. That would be no good for our country.
