Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s American site

Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s American site

6 years ago
Anonymous $2WKDXfy9lA

https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/30/australians-will-no-longer-be-able-to-order-from-amazons-american-site/

Starting in July, Australians will be blocked from ordering items on Amazon’s United States site. The company said today that shoppers in Australia will be redirected to its local site, Amazon.com.au, and that its international sites, including Amazon.com, will no longer ship to Australian addresses. The change is in response to a new tax regulation that goes into effect on July 1 and requires businesses earning more than $75,000 AUD a year to charge Australia’s 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) on low value items imported by consumers.

Called the “Amazon tax,” the new policy was introduced following concerns about the impact of Amazon and other large overseas e-commerce businesses on Australian retailers, who have to apply GST to all products they sell. A loophole in tax regulations, however, means that the GST is currently applied only to items purchased from overseas retailers if they are worth $1,000 AUD or more, which many local companies argued gave Amazon, eBay and other overseas competitors an unfair advantage.