Support grows for online GST

Retailers and shopping centre owners are urging today’s meeting of treasurers to outline the details of how they will make good on a plan to extend the GST to online offshore purchases.

Last month, the nation’s leaders gave in-principle support to imposing the consumption tax on overseas purchases on the internet under the current threshold of $1000; they referred the matter to the meeting of state and federal treasurers.

In a pre-emptive strike ahead of today’s meeting, the National Retail Association and Shopping Centre Council of Australia have joined to say they want the change made no later than July 2017, in line with the date when the “Netflix tax” will apply the GST to digital downloads.

Retailers are anxious to avoid a situation where a movie DVD could be imported tax-free but the downloaded version would attract the GST.

The groups also wants offshore retailers to remit GST for sales into Australia, on the grounds that this would eliminate the cost of collecting it at the border.

NRA chief executive Trevor Evans said the $1000 threshold was unfair for local retailers as it gave overseas online operators “a leg-up”.

“The state and federal governments need to close this unfair loophole once and for all,” Mr Evans said.