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Aussie Retailers Lobby For Tax On Online Purchases
An anonymous reader writes "Major Australian retailers are running a print advertising campaign to get the government to decrease the amount where the Goods and Services tax (Australian sales tax) comes into effect for all online purchases. Currently, the tax free amount is at $1000 AUD for online purchases. The retailers, such as Target, Harvey Norman, David Jones, Myer and others, are lobbying through newspapers and are considering launching a television commercial. The print adverts are claiming that if the amount remains the same, Australian jobs will be lost and the economy will be harmed. This is facing a massive backlash from consumers, and the government's assistant treasurer said it was an action by stores to fix the issues affecting them."
It seems unfair to have one set of rules for online retailers and another for brick and mortar retailers. I can't blame them for complaining. Why should they have to compete with a store that faces a lower tax rate?
Like the digital media producers of the world, these Australian retailers would rather shift the earth than themselves.
I don't understand what's the difference between selling in brick&mortar stores and selling online. Here in Europe VAT is included in all sales and that's fair I think.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/gerry-harvey-in-difficult-position-over-gst-crusade-20110107-19i3u.html
Gerry Harvey decided it wasn't the best idea to piss of his own customers..
And if that isn't bad enough, the New Zealand Retail Association thinks it's a great idea - they want the 15% GST to be applied to EVERY purchase, no matter the origin.
The way I see it, they should just stop whining that they don't have it easy any more. You just can't have a 50% margin any more, get over it. Stores should start competing based on their actual merits, such as the ability to get a product to you in less than 2 weeks. And an actual warranty.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I vote and I say no.
The big retailers came and close down the mom and pop shops.
Now the big retailers are hurting, and they want to return to profitability by taxing the competition.
Not sure how it can be done economicaly
G
It's the businesses problem if they no longer seem competitive.
That said I'm not sure how much of an impact it will have on Australian jobs, but brick and mortar shops and online retailers should probably be treated evenly.
Here's the real problem. The Australian dollar has traditionally been around 60-70c US. With a little mark-up and taxes, that makes a $100 item usually around $190+. Still more than just the exchange rate would belie, but not a massive amount
Now that the Australian dollar is worth more than the US dollar, retailers, importers and the like are STILL charging like the old days. a book that's $120US is $290 in Australia.
Far FAR more than a simple GST would indicate. Even with GST added to the book as an import, the price would end up around $132, less than half the Australian price.
GST is a furphy and anyone capable of doing the numbers would see that. Few do
Adding another 10% on top of your online purchases isn't going to help the retailers. What they want is for your goods to be held by customs until you go and pay the GST which will increase the time cost and be a major pain in the arse when customs take 3-4 months to process your stuff.
... the price difference was not typically more than 150% markup (without shipping) on the same product (with free shipping) as opposed to the 10% GST. You know, if the price difference were only 10-15% and shipping wasn't typically so overpriced ($15 - $20 for packages as small as RAM) even in the same city, I wouldn't mind buying in my own country.
Come to Australia so we can strip search you and rob you of your internets, pr0n, rights and freedoms.
The reason why people are shopping online is not because they don't have to pay the tax. Even if they did they can still get it cheaper accounting for postage/shipping by shopping online. The tax we are talking about is 10% yet many products you can get for 50% of the Australian price. It seems most retailers in Australia think the exchange rate for AUD/USD is 0.6 (currently at parity).
This isn't just bricks and mortar either:
Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN: AU$20,775.00 or US$11,899
The problem Gerry Harvey and co have is not that their goods are 10% more expensive then the equivalent goods online, the problem Harvey and co have is that their goods are 50% more expensive then the equivalent online.
Gerry Harvey's store, Harvey Norman (AKA Hardly Normal [prices]) is one of the stores I refuse to shop at due to it's high prices, incredibly annoying ads and now this. What Harvey really wants is for the government to step in and protect his profits (most of which come from predatory "interest free" deals which have something along the lines of 30% interest applied) by artificially making it more expensive to buy online.
Fortunately our assistant treasurer Bill Shorten has already shot the idea down saying it would be too expensive to implement.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The GST is not the issue.....adding 10% to the price of items bought from overseas still means the items are wayyy cheaper than ones bought from the large local retailers.
What the major stores want to do is to add so much "overhead" and hassle in buying overseas that people don't do it.
I mean...who collects the GST?..who remits the GST to the Aust Government ?..the overseas retailer??..hardly....Australian Customs??..pffft.....the purchaser????
The major retailers are trying to impose barriers to people jumping on the Net and buying the same item a lot cheaper with a few clicks and one way they can do this is to try and lobby the government to impose a lot of onerous "hoops" for people to jump through in the hope it'll all be too hard.
Thin end of the wedge people......
The GST issue is actually a non-issue but it's a highly visible one that can be driven hard. As it is, the 10% isn't the cause of the make/break when it comes to retailing. The bigger issue at hand here however is the constant desire we all have to increase our income more and decrease our expenditure (for the same quantity of goods). However, it's a circular system (I won't say closed, since we have inflation) and if you demand more wages then those wages have to come from... PROFIT. What people need to get into their heads is that you can't magically get more money to spend and expect everything (domestically) to be cheaper at the same time, not without you either climbing the ladder to a higher income job or something else to genuinely leap up to more income.
The problem with direct sales to China etc is that the cash has now left the country and isn't greasing the economic engine. I'm not saying that everyone should be forced to buy "Australian", however I think that people are failing to realise that they're ultimately selling themselves down a river without a paddle if they continue to send all their income overseas.
Another aspect is, I'm a domestic manufacturer (amongst other things) and it's brutally painful to see people being able to purchase complete electronics devices for less money than what I can even buy the raw parts for (also direct from China). So when people see my product at $40, they think I'm 'gouging' them $20 when they can get the same sort of thing direct for $20, where's the reality is I can't even buy the parts for less! When that happens I just drop the product line and if people ask why I don't have it, I give them the explanation. So even if you take personal profit out of the equation it's still impossible to compete against direct-buy for a lot of things. Yes, one has to get smarter about it and find new niche markets but don't go to town bitching at domestic companies about profit-gouging when we already have to be twice as nimble on our feet just to keep the doors open.
Paul.
..."Hardly Normal" were pulling out of that 'lil posse due to the sheer amount of flak they were copping for it?
The US and UK have very low thresholds for their import tax exemption, $200 and $30 respectively, just to make sure that their populations don't beggar their local economy by shopping in countries where cost-of-living and overheads are far below their own.
The Germans have a blanket 50% tariff to discourage that. All these economies are far hardier than Australia's, and 10-20x Australia's in size - have they got it wrong? Are they finding it too hard to collect the small amounts of tax involved - no way!
This story is a disgrace and the vast vast majority of consumers are utterly disgusted by the actions of these large chains.
We are currently under an oligopoly in Australia for retail options in general and it's mostly getting worse.
I went for the first time overseas recently to Hong Kong, Paris and London and within 2 or 3 days of the holiday, myself and my travel partner were utterly shocked, upset and dismayed at just how /ludicrously/ cheap everything was, clothing, shoes, internet, food - everything was vastly cheaper.
Things have always been traditionally 'gouged' here in regards to pricing, the problem is it's not just the retailers being scumbags, from what I gather the manufacturers, wholesalers and suppliers to the country are bastards too.
Apple for example sell products internationally with no middle man, the Apple stores purchased their goods from Apple asia where they are likely manufactured. The pricing is often not just 5 or 10% more but 20 to 50% more depending on items.
I purchased a pair of identical shoes to a pair I got in Melbourne for $280 in a genuine retail Nike store in Hong Kong for $70, I've looked at them thoroughly, several times over, they really are the genuine item yet the price difference is astounding.
Our dollar has recently gained strength internationally yet goods still don't appear to be getting cheaper in the slightest.
As for the retailers, Aussie retailers are living in the DARK.AGES - they have little to no concept of what an online store is or how to run one and have been laughing up the profits for years, finally the cost of shipping things internationally has continued to drop and the AU$ risen to the point we're going overseas for more and more goods.
I say a plague on all their houses, these people are greedy vermin, threatening Aussie jobs for the sake of (gross amounts) of profit.
GST is a furphy and anyone capable of doing the numbers would see that. Few do
And even fewer seem to care. This whole campaign by a few rich merchants has been met with an almost universal "piss off."
The right answer is to get rid of sales tax altogether. It's a ridiculously backwards, regressive tax that penalizes the poor more than the rich. You can try to make it fair by omitting food and basic necessities, but that doesn't work well because it hits the middle class the most, and is open to administrative abuses (the favored companies of the ones administrating the tax can have things omitted in their favor).
Get rid of sales tax. Then you won't have these market distortions.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This isn't all online purchases, just imports from overseas. The way it works is any import under $1000 AUD doesn't have to pay duties/tax.
Food prices are also now controlled by just a few companies in Aussie and this is something you can't go without. It's bad enough that Nike shoes are over the top, but when it's meat and bread it really hurts. The GST is essentially a tax on locally produced goods to which value has been added or service performed. Raw food is exempted from GST, bust processed food isn't so it now seems that Coles and others have found their own GST loophole by importing partly processed food but claiming the exemption. They spend millions finding out how to get around the GST so it seems absolutely hypocritical to bluster on about us buying mountains of sub-$1k items from overseas. I agree with AbRASiON on this - it's not the 10% they're worried about, it's the other 40% on top! See ATO guide on which foods attract GST here - http://www.ato.gov.au/print.asp?doc=/content/18694.htm Just don't know how highly processed brekfast cereals gain an exemption (ask Mr - tax free - Kelloggs/Sanitarium) and of course the sugar lobby got white refined sugar GST-free somehow - can't live without that one :-)
The whole GST application is a debacle. But AbASiON's ponit on gouging is valid - just try to buy books online and see what local suppliers think, never mind DVDs and MP3s.
The Board of Taxations released a study 12 months ago that stated recovery of GST on single imports below $1000 was not economically viable. http://www.taxboard.gov.au/content/reviews_and_consultations/gst_to_cross_border_transactions/report/gst_cross_border_transactions_report.pdf.
My experience with importing stuff is that Customs clearance is very quick - same day for most postal articles, a bit longer if you're forced to use Fedex, DHL, etc.
Based on the backlash against retailers, I can't see the government taking a chance at pissing off voters.
I rarely buy anything locally anymore (except for food) even if it costs me more to buy from overseas. Why? Australian resellers (both traditional and online), distributors and importers are lazy abusive con artists.
Every time I try to order anything locally it's either marked up by an obscene amount (anywhere from 200% to 2000% over the retail price in the US/UK/EU/etc.) or more likely simply unavailable because the local shops and distributors couldn't be fucked carrying anything except the cheapest shitty thing they can import from China.
Email an online store here and ask about a product - 90% of the time you get no reply. Go into a bricks and mortar shop and ask for something and 90% of the time they'll answer by offering you a completely different product. When you tell them that you're after a specific make and model and aren't interested in alternatives more often than not the sales guy will abuse you.
Just today I had another experience of the local bullshit: I wanted to buy some new HDD's (I'd rather buy spinning chunks of rust locally for warranty purposes), I'd settled on the new Hitachi 7K3000 in the 2TB size (note that the 3TB size _is_ available here) so I emailed the three distributors mentioned on the Hitachi site. One bounced (this also happens a lot) one ignored me and the other one said that I'd have to wait at least two more months before they'd be bothered to import them. Best guess as to why: there are probably thousands of the older 7K2000 2TB model sitting in a warehouse in Japan and the local dickheads probably offered to take them at a reduced price from Hitachi all the while still charging the same price to the customer.
This debate has been making headlines here for a few weeks now and the thing I find most ironic is that no one has bothered to suggest that just maybe the GST should be simply abolished - everyone seems to accept the idea that the government sticking its hand in your pocket every time you make a purchase as some kind of natural law. This baffles me: the left should naturally be against it because it disproportionately taxes the poor and the right should be against it because it's a tax that is administered non-voluntarily buy businesses without recompense.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
These guys loved it when they could stock their stores with goods from overseas at a fraction of the cost of locally produced equivalents... they passed a portion of the savings onto the consumer, pocketed the rest and did lots of locals out of a job.
Now that the everyman can also take advantage of the global supply chain and eliminate the middle man they cry foul... boo-hoo.
I'm an Australian consumer and I will happily pay an extra 10% on purchases for GST on behalf of the overseas retailer.
Goods online are, in nearly all instances over 50% cheaper overseas. If I can give 10% of this money to Australia to help support our country I am happy to do so.
Dear Retailers who are involved in this,
Please rest assured I and every other consumer who is outraged at your comments will never shop in your overpriced, monopolized brick and mortar stores ever again. Our AUD has almost doubled in value (54c to 101c vs USD) yet our prices are still increasing.
When you stop buying from China, so will we.
Just as governments have figured out they can push through any civil rights abuses by screaming 'think of the children', big corporates have figured out they can push anything through by screaming 'but we'll lose jobs'.
A few months ago there was an astonishing movement by the big mining companies who, screaming 'but we'll lose jobs', managed to get the Prime Minister evicted. Once big corporates saw that, it was never going to be long before they tried the same.
I just wonder, if the Australian retailers who are up in arms, would be happy to collect taxes for sales to US Citizens... whether theyre via the web, or actual foot traffic face to face customers... 'oh, youre American, thats an extra 9%... oh wait, youre from what state? thats 18% state tax too'... not a chance imo
Btw, Harvey Norman are trying to spearhead the same campaign in New Zealand
Why wont they lobby the other way round, to reduce the tax burden for themselves so they can compete on a fair ground with the online retailers?
Long time reader, first time poster.. I'd just like to point out a few things.. The Gerry Harvey(s) in this instance are all for wanting us Australians to pay for GST etc, but in reality what they're really whinging about is having to pay rent, super, public liability, company tax etc all masked under the guise of 'fair tax for all'... I've never heard him whinge for one moment before the leadup to christmas 2010 about this, when more and more people were buying online and the dollar was at parity with the US. I didn't hear him cry when Australian farmers ditched their crops into landfill because of cheaper imports, nor have I ever heard of him crying when Australian manufacturering went offshore to maximise his profits. 5 years ago, ordering online was the domain of young tech savvy users who were willing to take a chance on internet shopping russian roulette... Now we see a larger section of people, mums & dads, buying online and saving a bundle. I think the real issue however, is Australian importers and distributors. I've been told from someone who runs a rather large online camera store that if i was to buy a particular canon lens, that his buy price from canon is more expensive than what i can buy the same lens from an online store in the US. How can retailers honestly compete when distributors are charging so much more. I used to work in a gaming and media role, working with distributors on reviewing products. From time to time, i'd get to see wholesale pricelists of cds/dvds/games. New release dvds were sold at a wholesale level for $15-$19, with a RRP of $35-$40.. Or AAA gaming titles.. they'd be sold for $65-$70 at a wholesaler level, with RRP $99.95 - $119.95 RRP. Even when the dollar was at 50 US cents, to now parity, the cost of these goods has not changed. Distributors are pocketing the difference. I suppose its easier to attack customers and brand them as scum for not paying tax, when the real issue is higher up the chain. One can only hope that the ball is rolling and it snowballs into an avalache..
The problem with GST is that it gets applied at every transaction. Most imported goods in Australia are purchased by an importer/distributor, then sold to a retailer, then sold to the customer. This means that most items have been hit with 10% GST twice. Then you get funky situations where a distributor is buying a product from a seperate importer, and then selling to retailers before finally making it to the end-user. So now you've got 10% being applied 3 times to the same item (along with each companies' markup). That 10% for each transaction adds up very quickly, and is why it is far cheaper for the end-user to just purchase the item from overseas themselves.
Governments love GST because they can sell the idea of 10% to the populace, because hey, 10% isn't that bad right? Well, except when it actually ends up being 21%, or 33% (not factoring in each companies' mark-up).
Australia started as a prison colony, do you expect the basic nature to change?
To the Aussie's...I kid of course ):)
Kiwi's FTW!!!
Hear hear to this... And not just pricing - this goes to the heart of retail in every country. Regional encoding of dvds, printer cartridges, mobile phone locking, tariffs...the list goes on. they're all about passing on the benefits of globalisation to the manufacturers and distributors - while deliberately making it difficult or impossible for the consumer to reap similar benefits.
You obviously don't understand GST credits. If I buy something at $40 wholesale and pay $4 in GST, when I sell it to you for $50 + $5 GST, I give the government $1 and claim a GST credit for the other $4 - it's not like the old wholesale taxes.
Remember the last election when the mining companies ran ads talking about how the mining super tax would hurt aussie jobs? A lot of aussies ate it up.
Yet some mining companies had their best years EVER for profits in 2010 - iirc one of them made about DOUBLE in profits than the prior term.
So I'm really not surprised that we're seeing this from other sectors as well. I hope Costco kicks ass on the east coast and spreads to all of the capital cities - I'm tired of paying stupidly high prices for basic items and never being able to buy anything in bulk. Honestly, who ever only needs 16 rolls of TP? Give me a 64 pack, a 100 pack, I don't care. I'm not going to stop using it anytime soon.
i see this as the foremost excuse that private interests use to push bullshit for themselves. now whenever i see any justification using that 'jobs' bullshit, i label it as crap being pushed by private interests and disregard whatever it is attached to.
Read radical news here
No. There is no "tax-free" amount for online purchases. There is a GST free threshold of $1,000 for imported goods.
Local (Australian) online retailers still have to charge GST for all goods, regardless of cost (with the exception of certain goods which are GST exempt).
The $1,000 threshold only applies to imports, where the cost of enforcing GST collection when the retailer is not based in Australia isn't cost effective for smaller amounts.
A lot of this happened in the 80's and 90's in OZ,
My Uncle used to own an independent supermarket until Foodland started using standover tactics until he sold it to them (basically became a franchisee, but a bit more comlpex, he sold the store but remained manager in the service of Foodland which I believe are now part of IGAD, the least evil of the three big supermarket chains). This was two decades ago, there are damn few indies left in the entire country.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The less competitive firms argue for protectionism, rather than offer decent online shopping sites.
I buy from Australian sites when they are worthwhile: when they offer service and choice. I have bought mobile phones and Android tablets from Australian websites, because they had local warranties, faster delivery, and a decent range of items at competitive prices.
With books and CDs, it is often better to buy from overseas, where the range is much wider. And anyway, the books I want are just not available in Australia.
I am anarch of all I survey.
The print adverts are claiming that if the amount remains the same, Australian jobs will be lost and the economy will be harmed.
No, inefficient Australian jobs will be reassigned to other, more efficient sectors of the economy, and thus the Australian economy as a whole will be improved and more efficient.
But yeah, keep crying in the hope that dumb politicians will prop up your obsolete and wasteful business model. There is hope for you, if the MAFIAA are any guide. Tax and penalize the efficient and subsidize the shopkeeper and his minimum wage slaves who force you to waste time and fuel traveling to the store. Because paying people to stand around and give customers dirty looks is a wonderful use of labor and capital.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
We get gouged at the pump, gouged at the supermarket (though Woolworths only make 3c in each dollar net apparantly) and taxed on everything. The dollar has gained strength internationally I'm not going to be able to reap the benefits by shopping in AUS because harvey and these other retail goons are stuffing their pockets with our cash by increasing there profit margins and not passing any savings onto the consumer and in the name of what? Increasing profits.. what was wrong with just making a good profit and maintaining it ? "profits were down this year" Still made a huge profit arse holes!! not like your taking a loss!!!
Their all like chicken little the sky is falling or fire and brimstone trying to strong arm the government and the people by saying it will cost aussie jobs. BS. It should cost your purchasing manager there job and your marketing manager their job, for thinking people would swallow this BS.
Lob you in with banks and mines.
How about instead of trying to screw your customers you say
"Hey thanks for coming out in support and shopping with us this festive season we understand it has been trying year for some and despite the increasing interest rates, global financial crisis and constantly increasing cost of living ( mainly due to us ) we appreciate you spending at our stores"
the problem that the large retailers are creating for themselves is the media buzz/energy and awareness of a new way of shopping (online : a modern-mailorder system).
they know the power of advertising, but they have crafted a myth of "good value, Low Prices". and now they run an a campaign saying other people sell the stuff we sell cheaper so tax them more.
I cant remember any of the big business types in my lifetime ever arguing for more taxes. and today, Gerry Norman starts to moderate his message, now what has happened to his sales figures since the start of this campaign.
During the 00's and 90's, the tax break was useful to help build up the net. Now, the net is built up. It is time for nations to balance their budget esp. western nations.
What is needed is to avoid the insanity of multiple taxing districts. Instead, I would love to see ONE rate applied to all goods and then allow the nation of destination to decide how to divvy it up.
A 5% given to the nation would work. Here in the USA, we could keep 1% at the feds and then send 4% to the state and allow those states to decide how to deal with it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Come on. they only passed on savings when there was competition in town.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Australian retailers are con artists. They buy what the rest of the world doesn't want for cheap and try to sell it to its own people as if it were the latest trend so they can rip you off as much as they can.
Australia has a small market. I've bought several things from overseas in just the last few weeks, none of which are even available here and probably never will be.
Every few months I purchase computer bits and pieces from Europe (think retro computers and the likes, new and used) which no one in Australia sells or manufactures. If no one in Australia carries what I need to purchase, why should this extra tax apply to these items? It's not like I am going to be able to buy them locally in the first place.
Over the years I have come to accept that a lot of consumer products cost more in Australia than in many other European countries and America but it just feels as though the people with the money want to try and squeeze even more out of the masses.
Microsoft Visual Studio+Ultimate is $1,199 USD at microsoft.com to USA residents, or one-tenth the price you quote. If the MSDN account is 90% of the price, then don't buy that part!
Also, isn't it possible to buy those products after trading Aussie currency to US Dollars? It has to be worth it to try.
My company moved me to Australia (Sydney) for 8 years and I was astounded at how expensive EVERYTHING is there. Products, services, entertainment, hell even the local beach parking lot costs $4AU an hour! The thing that particularly pissed me off continually is how expensive Australian made products were and how poor the quality was, expensive items that lasted a short time. I could write a laundry list of them.
What I came to find over the years there is that while there are of course greater expenses in importing and manufacturing for Australia, they charge a lot because they can, and people pay for it. For the past few years in Australia the dollar has remained strong however there has been no shift in the pricing model by the big corporations to take advantage of it and pass it onto their loyal consumers.
This is why people, like me, turned to online purchases, not because of the tax-free reason but rather the vastly different total cost. As many have stated here I could order something from overseas, pay shipping, AND import tax and still save $100s of dollars over buying it in Australia. If I can do it, so can the big corporations, but why do it when you can charge 2x - 3x more for the same thing?
There is a very systemic issue in Australia at the moment which is effecting everything from the housing market to the agriculture market and I am afraid that when it crashes (which it will) it's going to crash hard and fast. The only way to stop it is for those in Australia to fight these companies by not buying from them.
Australia, beautiful country, wonderful people, horrible, horrible business sense.
I just did a small experiment. I went to lenovo.com.au and lenovo.com and picked out the base level T series laptop - in Australia it costs $1,799 and in the US $749. I accept that they may have somewhat different features but I didn't have time to spend on doing a precise comparison - I'd be interested in the results of a better experiment. Nonetheless the difference in price is noteworthy. This equipment is shipped to both countries from China. Why such a price differential?
They've picked up the US polticians standard line. If we don't do this US jobs will be lost and the economy will suffer. I cannot count how many times that's been used here to justify the most obscene spending bills, creation of absurd laws, etc.
They've picked up the US polticians standard line. If we don't do this US jobs will be lost and the economy will suffer. I cannot count how many times that's been used here to justify the most obscene spending bills, creation of absurd laws, etc.
They didn't need to "pick it up" from the US... they've been pulling the same BS here for decades.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
http://www.homelessnessinfo.net.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=703%3Ain-the-news-charity-for-the-homeless-a-waste-says-gerry-harvey&catid=146%3Ahomelessness-news&Itemid=43
'You could go out and give a million dollars to a charity tomorrow to help the homeless. You could argue that it is just wasted. They are not putting anything back into the community. It might be a callous way of putting it but what are they doing? You are helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason. They are just a drag on the whole community.'
The community attitude is 'Gerry Harvey can go to hell'!
The thing people are forgetting is this: There is already an import tax in place on goods purchased overseas, however the threshold is $1000; I found this out the hard way when I bought a $2000 dollar custom laptop from the US five years ago and got hit for $200 dollars from customs. Even marking an item as a 'gift' will incur this tax as long as you declare it at the correct price (most retailers will not lie about the cost of the item though for insurance reasons, so lying is not always a way to get out of the tax).
The other thing is this, even -Australian- online retailers are almost 50% cheaper than bricks and mortar stores AND THEY CHARGE GST. I remember buying a designer fragrance for my mother from an online Australian store last Christmas, and paying 53% below the RRP. That's including GST. It wasn't a difference of a few dollars, but more than 50% less! I would have gladly paid 10% extra in a bricks and mortar shop and gotten it immediately, but there was no such option.
I WORK at Myer and I'll tell them the reason why profits have been down: A) Our service record has dropped considerably. Hours were cut mid last year in the height of the recession, and have never reached the levels they were pre-recession even though Myer had a profitable financial year this year. It is the height of the sales and we're all doing the work of 10 people; customers can't get served. Staff are extremely unhappy. Morale is at an all time low. B) This year, in Western Australia, extended trading over Christmas was pushed for very hard. Unfortunately, extended trading is actually hurt us this year. Sales were absolutely dreadful weeknights between 6-9, with staff literally doing nothing most nights. Yet you still need to pay more than 30 people to staff the entire store. More hours open hasn't equaled more sales like they hoped, instead sales targets can't be reached. Furthermore, we had three days over Christmas where we had to pay our staff 250% of their base pay because of the nature of the public holidays. C) The banks raised interest rates just prior to Christmas which hurt retailers the most. D) Shopping centre rent is insanely expensive. D) Our actual sale have been pretty average. The items on offer in the stock-take sale launch were 'gimmicky' -- that is, a lot of it was old stock that was just reduced instead of a flat reduction on a blanket brand. A lot of it was 'oh that's not on sale,' or 'oh not that brand' they actually have better offers on now in middle of the stocktake sale, however, it's kind of too little too late now, they didn't have a great launch offer when it counted, and they underperformed because of this. E) People can price check now thanks to places like getprice.com.au and lasoo.com.au and consumers are more finicky than ever before. For example, J&B hifi does really well in Australia because they often just have the lowest price. You might notice I don't see them backing up the others.
Personally, I buy overseas a lot-- but a lot of it is things I can't get here! They don't sell a lot of brands here or they are very hard to get, especially US Urban brands. They are not losing my sale: they never had it in the first place. And personally, the sales they lose me on (cosmetics, electronics, games) are things I buy online from AUSTRALIAN online retailers, who, like I said, I pay 10% GST on anyway.
Gerry Norman has a case of Sour Grapes, badly. And if anything this 'campaign' has hurt the retail sector even more, and drawn more attention to online shopping more than ever before. The backlash is enormous. Shame on you, Gerry Norman. You just shot yourself in the proverbial foot.