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Amazon Will no Longer Ship to Australia

posted by martyb on Sunday June 03 2018, @03:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the Ignore-the-customer-and-maybe-they-will-go-away dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Australian government gave notice to online retailers that they must collect tax on behalf of the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and submit the tax collected to the ATO for purchases made by Australians overseas. Surprisingly, online retailers objected to this and at the time threatened to block Australian shoppers. Now Amazon has taken the step of preventing Australians from purchasing from their US site and sending parcels to Australia. Amazon have stated that Australians can now purchase products from the Australian Amazon site, which while true comes with a significant markup of, in some cases, 160 per cent or more over the price of the product in the US Amazon site. This does not prevent Australians from working around this technicality by engaging with a shipping company in America to bounce products through their warehouse and having the parcels forwarded on to an Australia address. In the mean time, from July 1st 2018 onward, Amazon will no longer ship products to an Australian address.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by MostCynical on Sunday June 03 2018, @03:31AM (9 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Sunday June 03 2018, @03:31AM (#687913) Journal

    This has been discussed for years, and was legislated last year..https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/19/gst-extended-to-all-goods-bought-overseas-from-july-2018

    Amazon "launched" the Australian site in November last year https://www.smh.com.au/technology/amazon-australia-everything-you-need-to-know-20171121-gzphez.html [smh.com.au]

    Chances are, the tax issue is just an excuse to gouge Australians.

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 03 2018, @03:49AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 03 2018, @03:49AM (#687918) Journal

    Chances are, the tax issue is just an excuse to gouge Australians.

    Quite mild for a cynical. Chances are? You can be sure of it, the corporate tax cuts won't refinance themselves.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by coolgopher on Sunday June 03 2018, @03:56AM (4 children)

    by coolgopher (1157) on Sunday June 03 2018, @03:56AM (#687919)

    I'd like to also add that Amazon's Australian site is shite. Comparatively no products at all, and prices on par with other Australian sources (think ~2x Amazon US prices).

    Mind you, I'd found the US Amazon site to have largely gone to hell too since they brought on board all the third party sellers. Used to shop Amazon, don't any more.

  • (Score: 2) by isj on Sunday June 03 2018, @02:38PM (2 children)

    by isj (5249) on Sunday June 03 2018, @02:38PM (#688032) Homepage

    I did RTFA but didn't get any wiser as to how the Australian GST rule impacts Amazon differently than the internal EU rules. Can anyone enlighten me?

    The EU rule is that if a company in country A sells for less than X euros per year to country B then they just collect GST in the country A. If they sell more than X euro per year to country B then they must collect GST for country B instead. The euro limit varies but is generally around 35.000. So small shops don't have to worry about it. There are slightly different rules for import into the EU (tariffs etc).

    So I'm wondering if there is any different impact on Amazon than selling to EU countries, of if Amazon is just trying to avoid GST completely thereby undercutting local companies.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2018, @12:07AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2018, @12:07AM (#688154)

      The cost of interacting with the Australian Tax Orifice

    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday June 04 2018, @02:33AM

      by MostCynical (2589) on Monday June 04 2018, @02:33AM (#688189) Journal

      Australia launches new GST rules for overseas sellers | Taxation
      https://www.taxation.co.uk/Articles/.../australia-launches-new-gst-rules-overseas-sellers18 [taxation.co.uk]
      18 Jul 2017 - From 1 July 2018, businesses that sell goods into Australia will be required to charge goods and services tax (GST) on goods valued at A$1,000 or less. UK businesses that sell more than A$75,000 of taxable supplies (including low value goods) a year to consumers in Australia will need to register with the …

      Even under the $AUD 75,000 threshold, GST has to be collected and remitted.

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex