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Australia: Your Digital Games (and Movies!) Could Be About to Jump In Price

Posted by timothy on from the your-lunch-money-was-jangling dept.

dotarray writes with a snippet of news from Australia about expanded taxation for digital goods. From Player Attack comes the gist: Australians really are about to start paying more for digital services — including Steam games — as Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey has confirmed plans to introduce a 'Netflix tax' in this week's Federal Budget. As mentioned last week, this is not a new tax, but an extension of Australia's current Goods and Services Tax to include digital services, adding 10% to virtual items and services purchased online. Details have not yet been revealed, but potential services include not only Steam games but also Netflix subscriptions and even Uber trips.

8 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Uber isn't collecting GST? by _merlin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It makes no sense at all if Uber isn't collecting GST. The GST is essentially a value-add tax applied to all domestic sales of goods or services. It doesn't apply to hobbies, exports, and personal imports up to a certain value. But I can't see any way Uber should be exempt from GST. It's clearly provision of a service for money, and hence subject to GST. Yet another way these goons think they can just avoid the law.

  2. Australian here with wishful thinking by Quick+Reply · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would support this if the government:

    1. Pursued these companies for company tax, not just make them pass on GST from our pockets.
    2. More funding to the ACCC to make these companies actually stick to Australian Consumer Laws (i.e. Sony PSN & Steam)
    3. Do something about the price disparity to overseas that can not be reasonably be explained by the tax, shipping, costs to do business in Australia, etc.

    But knowing this government, it will just be another hairbrain implementation that hurts anyone who is not a middle/upper-class baby-boomer.

    1. Re:Australian here with wishful thinking by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree in principle with what you said but there's reasons the above aren't being done:

      1. Pursued these companies for company tax, not just make them pass on GST from our pockets.

      This is not as easy as it sounds. Company tax legislation is a complete clusterfuck and there's no easy laws that can be introduced to fix it without creating a heck of a large legal problem. There have been efforts over the past 10 years from both governments to solve this, and all they've done is baby steps.

      2. More funding to the ACCC to make these companies actually stick to Australian Consumer Laws (i.e. Sony PSN & Steam)

      The ACCC doesn't actually need more funding. From what I can tell they are doing a wonderful job already making these companies comply with the consumer laws. The problem here is that consumer laws don't provide the protection you think they do. I'm not sure why you mention either the PSN or Steam as neither of those services seem to run afoul of anything in the laws. On the other hand things like the Xbox360 red ring of death the ACCC was quick to slap MS around a bit for not covering what was clearly a manufacturing defect under warranty resulting in Australia being the first country with extended warranties to cover the problem.

      3. Do something about the price disparity to overseas that can not be reasonably be explained by the tax, shipping, costs to do business in Australia, etc.

      This I can get behind.

  3. Re:Great news! by NoMaster · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It won't actually happen, because our economy is roaring along thanks to the mining boom, and the powers-that-be want to slow it down a bit and rake in some of the dough while the going's good.

    Errr, yeah, OK. Checked mineral commodity prices lately?

    It's slowing down quite nicely by itself thank you, and no thanks to any (non-existant) government attempts to slow it down. Besides which the Aus govt is still wedded to the completely dickheaded means of manipulating the economy by controlling housing availbility & prices - anything else is a bit too complicated for the "Clever Country"*...

    (* Where "clever" means "I negative geared out my arsehole & now have slightly more money than I started with"...)

    --
    What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
  4. How? by NewtonsLaw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And how are they going to collect this GST from overseas companies?

    There's no way to ensure that every mom and pop online business selling digital media/games over the Net into Australia will comply with a "request" from the Aussie government (because they have no legal power to force them) to collect GST on their behalf for free.

    Will they be asking credit card companies to automatically levy the GST on overseas purchases? If they do then they're opening a pandora's box that they really ought to keep closed.

    I could see Bitcoin getting a new lease of life for Aussies :-)

  5. Re:That's great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Newsflash: As a knee-jerk reaction, people don't want to pay more taxes.

    However they do want public services. Closing down public services is the opposite of what people want too.

    Problem is, those are paid for with taxes.

  6. Re:Fuck this bullshit. by bentcd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What I would really want is the ability to say where I want my tax money to go to.

    You already have that ability, it's called an election.

    --
    sigs are hazardous to your health
  7. Re:Fuck this bullshit. by Moloth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You already have that ability, it's called an election.

    Hahahah - you crack me up. They decide after the election how to misspend our tax dollars.