• Welcome to ZD Forums! You must create an account and log in to see and participate in the Shoutbox chat on this main index page.

Australians importing games will pay more next year

Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...d-to-all-goods-bought-overseas-from-july-2018

This only affects the Australians here but I'll explain it.

Currently if I buy something overeass costing less than $1000 - like say a Switch game or PS4 game from Amazon, we Australians currently pay no tax on it.

But from mid next year the 10% GST will be applied so in short this makes places like Amazon 10% more expensive for me.

This is impossible to police however and Amazon is against this as they don't want to bother about collecting the tax for Australia. Amazon want a better system (better in their opinion) in place.

If Amazon play ball on this then we Australians paying like $5-$6 more (ie 10%) more for the average PS4 or Switch game.

Before anyone cries politics, this was agreed to by both sides of government. Bipartisan support. Labor wanted it to start next year not now and the Coaltion said fine.
 

Lozjam

A Cool, Cool Mountain
Joined
May 24, 2015
Easy fix:
Set your Switch or PS4 to US mode(there are several Zip codes with $0 sales tax), and get your games digitally.

I know that this completely sucks, and it's just another reason to not get physical releases. I know some people really like physical releases, but sometimes it just isn't that worth it.

But hey, now you know how a lot of Americans feel. Our sales tax is up the wazoo often times, in many areas. Especially in Illinois.

But at least there is a good work around for this, and if you are smart, your own financials won't change with these games.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
But hey, now you know how a lot of Americans feel. Our sales tax is up the wazoo often times, in many areas. Especially in Illinois.
Even with the tax issues issues you have, Australians still pay more for games. Locally here they are expansive or we import with a terrible currency conversion rate + high shipping from the US or UK or Japan to Australia.

I'll take your up the wazoo sales tax over our higher prices any day of the week.
Trust me, you don't our higher prices, it's not cool to pay more for every game. This is even before the 10% extra cost from importing.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom