Japanese shops applying Australian import tax

[katoftw]

2 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Katoftl, you accused me of benefiting from defending amiami (I am, of course not), I could ask the same of you getting benefit from competitors for trolling them here. It was good this was debated as it was here as in the end it turns out they are not absconding with aus gst as you guys claimed and the japan gst added to make a “retail price” is standard practice by other vendors and it’s moot as it’s all about the final price and their dealing with taxes and their associated business costs in country is none of our concern, just the final price.

 

if you continue to slam them I will continue to defend them if I think something is untrue or unfair. I don’t like to see any shop get slammed with false or misleading claims on the forum.

 

jeff

In you first paragraph, you have already addressed this issue in another one of your tldr post. So I can only assume you are attempt to have the last say or just needing your voice heard. Funny how you went super quiet on the issue of ARN when others brought it up.

 

As for the second bit. I'd challange you to find where I have given misleading information regards comsumption tax. So responding to everything typed by another because you have a different belief, yes belief... Especially for a situation that doesn't effect your own purchases. I think about whom you call out trolling first.

[cteno4]

Same mess hitting the us here soon as Supreme Court cleared the way for states to force business to collect out of state sales for them just like Australian gst. We have 50 states with many different sales taxes so it will be a mess. Hopefully some unified solution will come about for this collection and redistribution as it’s a mess for the little guys to figure this out.

 

jeff

[cteno4]

17 minutes ago, katoftw said:

In you first paragraph, you have already addressed this issue in another one of your tldr post. So I can only assume you are attempt to have the last say or just needing your voice heard. Funny how you went super quiet on the issue of ARN when others brought it up.

 

As for the second bit. I'd challange you to find where I have given misleading information regards comsumption tax. So responding to everything typed by another because you have a different belief, yes belief... Especially for a situation that doesn't effect your own purchases. I think about whom you call out trolling first.

 

I apologize to you and the forum, I should not have made that comment, it was a cheap shot at you in reaction to your comment about me but as a forum admin I should not have done that.

 

i just restated things as I see it again as this thread has gone all over the place and folks are dropping in not reading all the thread. I waited to reply to the thread once the ARN issue was cleared up. That is now put to bed, it’s unfortunate for Australian customers of amiami but amiami is not doing anything wrong.

 

yes we have a difference of opinion on the japan gst, and at this point we can leave it at that, don’t need to keep looping around the tree. This issue is universal to all exports outside japan.

 

jeff

[Takahama Trainwatcher]

On ‎7‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 6:19 AM, bill937ca said:

Canada has sued some big box online retailers like Amazon and eBay and forced them to collect GST.   This is also the case with many magazine subsriptions.

I think maybe Amazon, in response to the Australian government's demands regarding the collection of GST, said "sod it". According to news reports they intended to block us Aussies from their site come the GST introduction. They were then going to open an Australian site with much more limited buying options.

That being the case, we should appreciate that the Japanese hobby shops are continuing on with their Australian customers (excluding Tam Tam).

[Das Steinkopf]

2 hours ago, Takahama Trainwatcher said:

I think maybe Amazon, in response to the Australian government's demands regarding the collection of GST, said "sod it". According to news reports they intended to block us Aussies from their site come the GST introduction. They were then going to open an Australian site with much more limited buying options.

That being the case, we should appreciate that the Japanese hobby shops are continuing on with their Australian customers (excluding Tam Tam).

 

The whole online GST saga is a very grubby issue, Labor only went for the $1000+ threshold as it was too difficult to apply on smaller values and it would cost more to implement than it could recoup, the Liberals though with persistent lobbying from rank and file members such as Gerry Harvey decided to expand it to cover everything. What the Liberals have done is shift the onus of collection onto the overseas retailers which has caused some friction, there are many suppliers who have basically ignored the government because even by the ATO's admission they cannot force a business operating in a foreign tax jurisdiction to collect and pay the ATO tax revenue for transactions done outside of Australia. Even when it comes to tracking the amount of business these companies do with Australian customers it would be very hard to maintain, it would mean that every single parcel coming into the country would have to be examined and the documentation checked and added to a file to keep tabs on the total value, parcel services would either come to a crawl or near stop due to the backlog created, the government would then have to employ more resources and staff to monitor this which would in turn reduce the amount of revenue earned due to additional expenses. 

 

 Whilst I understand that a number of businesses will have to play ball with the ATO due to the sheer volume of business they do in Australia such as eBay, Amazon, Netflix etc there are many more that can simply just fall through the cracks, the costs for the ATO to mount legal action against non compliant businesses would most likely be cost prohibitive and in many cases unenforceable. For me though the reason why I am dirty with AmiAmi is that they are slugging us with the 8% Japanese Sales Tax which we should not be liable for as well as the 10% GST, the fact that they have flat out denied collecting the 8% Japanese Sales Tax on foreign orders is not a good look, despite the fact it is quite evident in their pricing structure. There are plenty of other businesses such as Hobbysearch which yes they do collect the 8% Japanese Sales Tax have no interest in collecting the 10% GST, that said I will shift my business to the retailers that can offer me the best value for money, at the end of the day that's why we ended up looking at overseas online retailers for our hobby needs as local retailers are either unable to fulfill our needs or not at the price we are willing to pay for.

Edited July 15, 2018 by Das Steinkopf

[cteno4]

Amiami has revamped their website. Nice improvement for the user experience, nav elements and layout got cleaned up. Not a huge make over but nice to have it a bit more tidy all around.

 

No new internal navigation/subdivision of the model trains so you still need to know what you want to find it.

 

you may need to delete any amiami.com cookies as it can cause product pages and seaech results to come up empty.

 

jeff

[katoftw]

Was wondering why I couldn't see anything.  Tried a few times over the weekend.  Get a pop up today/now mentioning the cookies issue.  Thanks Jeff.

Edited July 28, 2018 by katoftw

[cteno4]

AmiAmi now appears to be putting the same price as HS and what is on manufacture product sheets for their items (i assume those are minus japan vat). they have removed the discount percentage based on the srp plus japan vat. now you just get a price discounted from the same srp that everyone else shows. 

 

jeff

[katoftw]

Nope japan and international same prices

[cteno4]

Sorry, my mistake, I thought I saw the same SRP on the flyer I was looking at but I was wrong. They are just showing the Japanese (SRP plus vat) list like hobbysearch does. But they have dropped the “discount” percent and just give a price now. 

 

Jeff

[katoftw]

Sorry what I meant is their prices include Japanese GST.  And Japanese and international buyers pay the same amount.  You can check both the jp and eng pages to confirm.  They don't hide it well, nor do they care.

[disturbman]

Yes, and Hobby Search prices are higher for international buyers than for Japanese buyers (VAT included).

Random sample:
https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10543258

https://www.1999.co.jp/10543258

Can we let this nonsense about the evilness of AmiAmi go now?

Edited September 7, 2018 by disturbman

[chadbag]

5 hours ago, disturbman said:

Yes, and Hobby Search prices are higher for international buyers than for Japanese buyers (VAT included).

Random sample:
https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10543258

https://www.1999.co.jp/10543258

Can we let this nonsense about the evilness of AmiAmi go now?

 

It is interesting that they, HS, have two Japanese prices:  the lower one is COD/Prepay and the second one, below it, is with credit card.

 

[katoftw]

No access to those JP only options in my situation and price point of the items I buy.

Edited September 7, 2018 by katoftw

[chadbag]

42 minutes ago, katoftw said:

No access to those JP only options in my situation and price point of the items I buy.

 

The HS JP card price is the exact same as the international price except it has the Japan consumption tax on it.   The only "cheaper" JP price is their prepay/COD price.

 

So, at least at HS, the JP price, card payment, and the international price (also card or similar payment) are the same with the exception of the consumption tax being on the JP price and not on the international price.

 

At AmiAmi, the same item shown in the example above is less expensive.

Edited September 7, 2018 by chadbag

[katoftw]

Yeah thanks, I did understand that. Which is why I am somewhat confused about the relivance to amiami's situation.

 

But I dont need to revisit the amiami saga again.

[chadbag]

Just a question:  For those shops that don't collect it, do you get dinged when it gets to Oz and customs processes it?  Ie, do you end up paying it one way or another anyway?

[cteno4]

No Australia decided they could not handle trying to collect gst on packages less than $1000A at the border, so they made this requirement for foreign companies over $75kA Australian sales to register with ATO and collect it and pay it to ATO. It puts the collection and hassle on the exporters instead of their customs for all the little bits.

 

jeff

[katoftw]

4 hours ago, chadbag said:

Just a question:  For those shops that don't collect it, do you get dinged when it gets to Oz and customs processes it?  Ie, do you end up paying it one way or another anyway?

 

4 hours ago, cteno4 said:

No Australia decided they could not handle trying to collect gst on packages less than $1000A at the border, so they made this requirement for foreign companies over $75kA Australian sales to register with ATO and collect it and pay it to ATO. It puts the collection and hassle on the exporters instead of their customs for all the little bits.

 

jeff

To add a bit more to Jeff's post.  We already collected GST and import duties for items over $1000AUD.  Which end up being large amounts of money.  They wanted to have no limit.  But you'd collect little amounts as 10% of small purchases is minimal.  eBay, Alibaba Netflix etc all had to start collecting GST as previously they did not as the offices were outside Australia but did business inside Australia.  The government calculated that they could make $16BN from collecting GST on under $1000AUD items.  Problem was, it was calculated that it would cost $16BN in wages and new facilities to handle said process.  So they lumped it on the retailers.

It was suggested to lower the limit to $500AUD, but somewhere along the line, that go rejected.

[chadbag]

What recourse does Australia have on shipments from retailers who do not collect this tax?  If the retailer has no presence in Australia, how can they enforce it?

 

[cteno4]

Ahh that’s the amiami limit for sal! They do allow registered sal over 8000jpy, at least to the us for 400jpy reg charge on top of sal shipping charge. I had a preorder from way back just come Thru today for 11000jpy that would only allow registered sal and above for shipping, no sal. I wondered what their sal limit was. 

 

im guessing ATO tracks the export customs listing prices and companies. This is now computerized in a lot of places so easier to get ahold of. If they see over the limit coming in and the company is not registered with ATO for gst collections they could maybe stop their packages at customs and return them, but logistically it seems pretty hard. I doubt there is a legal basis in most export countries for Australia to force or fine them to register or collect gst In the export country for a foreign country. Australia said their postal service could not handle collecting the gst as a duty at delivery, too much work on them. I guess they could do like other countries and apply a duty delivery fee to cover these costs, but it sounded like they just didn’t even have the infrastructure to do this currently. I think they just wanted to go after the big exporters mainly. I’m guessing the $75000A limit was set as that is the domestic collection limit.

 

jeff

 

 

[chadbag]

If I were a foreign company, I would just refuse.   Let the customer know they owe the tax themselves, or whatever, and let the Australian post office deal with trying to enforce it / charge duty tax etc.    It would not be my business or cost to collect their tax when not under their jurisdiction.  If the Australian post office was "overwhelmed" with foreign packages to try and collect on, there might be a change of thinking...

 

Good thing I am not one of these companies 🙂

 

 

[cteno4]

1 hour ago, katoftw said:

The government calculated that they could make $16BN from collecting GST on under $1000AUD items.  Problem was, it was calculated that it would cost $16BN in wages and new facilities to handle said process.  So they lumped it on the retailers.

It was suggested to lower the limit to $500AUD, but somewhere along the line, that go rejected.

 

that $16B figure must be over a very long time. the stuff i saw pinned it at like $300M over the first three years if half of it was collected for the under $1000 import stuff. 

 

https://theconversation.com/levying-gst-on-all-packages-is-complicated-and-risky-for-everyone-involved-98763

https://www.zdnet.com/article/australian-taxation-office-says-low-value-gst-collection-doing-better-than-expected/

 

total gst is about $60B/yr. a potential of $16B for under $1000 import sales would mean they make up 20% of all gst items. no way there.

 

everyone seems to agree it would cost them as much as they would take in if they tried to do all the collection domestically for everything.

 

too bad the lowering to $500 went out, seems like it wouldnt put a huge stress on the system as doing all small things but bring in some new revenue.

 

jeff

[cteno4]

The rest of the discussion on the Australian GST has been moved over to the gst thread

 

nuff said in this thread here.

 

jeff