Equal pay and conditions for everybody.

[trash]

That's right, listen up. Comrade trash has some socialist ideas to share with the proletariat.

With the change in international GST law the government has set a precedent for other unexpected situations.

The situation is, when you buy something from Aliexpress, Amazon, ebay etc. The government wants them to collect 10% GST on the sale.
The real question here is; Where does that sale take place?
If it is not on Australian soil, then the government really has no jurisdiction to impose a tax on foreign soil.

The government considers the transaction to be on Australian soil because the shopfront is virtually in Australia, marketing to Australian customers and it is paid for with Australian dollars from Australian soil.

Now apply this logic to telecommuters.
Off shore workers are working on Australian soil. They should therefore be paid minimum or award wages and be subject to Australian workplace laws and conditions including sick leave, annual leave, workers compensation and unfair dismissal.

After all, foreign workers can do the same job the same or better than Australian workers, they deserve to be paid fairly for it. Equal pay for equal work.

The benefit for Australian workers is they can compete on a level playing field with foreign workers.
The benefit for foreign workers is better wages and conditions.
The benefit for foreign communities is a trickle down of wealth from those workers.
The benefit for the unions is they stand to gain a lot of new members.
And either or both governments recover income tax from the workers.

Similar logic can be applied to criminal action.
If an Australia is defrauded on Australian soil by a person operating off shore, that person can be tried for their crime on Australian soil in the same was as if they had been physically located in the country.

[enf]

Hmmmm......Hmmmm......

I'm sure that Australias genius politicians will be all over that to make everything fair.....Yup! Top of their list of concerns, being the logical, thoughtful lot that they are.
.
Good luck with that one.

[LeroyPatrol]

quite a precedent lol

Lets see if you can get that one off the ground.

[trash]

I don't expect it to float. But a turd like that can be hard to flush.
Putting the idea out there giving it a chance to be heard and maybe even tested.

[enf]

I don't expect it to float. But a turd like that can be hard to flush.
Putting the idea out there giving it a chance to be heard and maybe even tested.

I guess so. But one turd in a sea of turds is hard to distinguish, OR flush....so selecting it for special attention is difficult.

[gordon_s1942]

I always thought when you imported something, a declaration has to be made as to what it is and once its here, then Customs and Excise determine if it is Taxable and hold it until the payment is made.

Another way would be for the sender to collect the Tax and remit it to the ATO putting a notice on the goods that the relevant Tax has been paid, like a 'Franking' machine used for paying postage instead of using stamps.
I have never bought anything from O/Seas worth enough to be taxed until they changed the laws.

[trash]

That is effectively what the ATO is doing Gordon. When you buy something from say aliexpress the seller isn't paying the tax, the buy is. That is collected by the agent which is aliexpress and the fun part is that under Australian law the GST can't be added to the sale.
So it is included in the listed price. The Chinese seller won't like that and they will all up their sale prices by 10% knowing it will be taken out with their fees.

The ATO is making the agent the tax collector. You saw Amazon's knee jerk reaction which was to tell the Australian government to go fvck itself.
But amazon.com.au still exists? wtf?

What is going on here is that amazon.com is USA and they don't want to pay or collect a tax on sales from Australia. Nothing is going to piss off a buyer more than discovering that his $50 item will cost $25 to ship. He clicks on the buy and the price suddenly changes from $75 to $82.50. The easy way out is to just say or actually do a geo block from Australian IP's. Now we all know we're going to VPN our way around that.
But the same item will still be for sale in Australia form the amazon.com.au site.
There is an issue here that needs clarifying. If Amazon has an Australian distribution factory, then the shipping should be considerably less than form the USA. So even with the 10% gst it should be cheaper to buy it local.
However, if something doesn't come from an Amazon "fulfillment center" then it is shipped directly from China.
This leads us down the path of international price inequality. Do we think that will be a 10% difference?

If you buy it from USA amazon, then that 10% gst isn't charged and there is no way for the government to enforce it.

[Uncle Fester]

OK, I would like to clarify a few things here.

First of all Amazon, Gerry Harvey and other 'local' mega stores buy shitloads of stuff very cheap overseas to sell them here for insane profit margins to us peasants.

Smaller Bricks & Mortar shops operate similar but the ratio of high running costs and income is not good.
In fact it is so bad they shouldn't be wasting time and money with these small B&M shops and should do something more productive to earn money.
We have in our local shopping centre far too many little clothing shops that sell the same (overseas bought) crap for hideous prices.

As we (almost)don't produce anything ourselves, this Gov tax collection does (almost) nothing for our growth, jobs and economy, like most of their other decisions lately.
... like spending 140+ Billion, so those who need it most only get $200 a year. That is 2 days rent in Sydney for the working class, an utter insult and Turdbull and Co should be publicly stoned and quartered.
So much for equality. We need to fix it here before we worry about foreign offshore workers !!!

Of course the tax collection does well to fill their koffers and very clever to put all the collecting workload on the overseas sellers. Maybe Gerry himself came up with that ingenious idea.

Back to Amazon: they agreed to play the game by the 'local rules' by creating a local store and closing the US shop to us so they can charge exorbitant without having to compete with themselves.
I showed examples on the other thread of the the same items costing up to 5 times more locally than on their US site.
This has nothing to do with the effort of collecting GST or shipping costs. Amazon US already had such collection systems in place. When you ordered over AU$1000
the (duty)tax was automatically added.

VPNs are useless, you can't bypass anything. Gerry Harvey thought of everything and instructed our Gov well.
They have special ruling for mail re-direct services, allegedly over 3000 overseas vendors and re-direct services already targeted and are searching the internet for more.
All these will be addressed and asked to register and comply with the GST collection or prove that their Australian turnover is less than 75k.
This means a shitload of paperwork that will piss off smaller overseas vendors or their agents. ATO wants to see the complete money trail.
The ATO's wording is rather rude and threatening but well worth the time to read it all:


As for jurisdiction in other countries, everything is globally connected. The ATO would not shy from spending tens of thousand$$ to send audit agents overseas to collect a few hundred bucks +some nasty fines, just to make a point.
As for getting overseas authorities to work with them: everybody has their price.

[enf]

..................................... and Turdbull and Co should be publicly stoned and quartered.

Geee...who voted for this nomeat? Surely not Shortchange and Co.....oh wait, that's right, they did. But I'm sure they'll ditch it after the next election.....

I don't see what the ethical problem is apart from the sheer inefficiency of this ridiculous process. So, skip the tax and don't buy the sh*t. You probably didn't need it anyway. I'm lucky I suppose as I can have things sent in as gifts, or repairs. Theres always a way.....

It's not gonna save Gougie Harvey.

[loanrangiel]

Since we produce bugger all here, it has to be imported regardless if by sea/air freight or by parcel post so its not so simple to say dont buy anything from OS.

[trash]

So much for equality. We need to fix it here before we worry about foreign offshore workers !!!

You're not good with game theory are you Nomeat?
Have you read Sun Tzu's "Art of War"?

The problem is that you have to play the game with some specific sets of rules.
Either you make the rules or you enforce somebody else's rules upon them.
If you make the rules, then you better be bloody sure that somebody like me isn't going to make you subject to your own.

Another suggestion. Join the Satanic Temple and see how they apply that logic.
If there is one thing religious idiots love, it's the 1st amendment, until they find themselves subject to it.

Now lets assume for a moment that I'm an evil racist SOB. But not going to step up like a republican/confederate and say "They took our jerbs!"
Sack them and give the jerbs back to the whiteys!

No.. that's not how we play politics. That's nationalist racism. Instead by insisting that they get paid and treated fairly, I'm the good guy.
The reality is that if you oppose that, then you are clearly the evil capitalist. Who doesn't want to be paid fairly for the work they do?
By saying you don't care about browntown, you sound like an uncaring racist and my shit don't stink!

The reality is that the Indian telecommuters are substandard. They don't provide good customer service and they risk corporate and national security.
And for what? to side step Australian industrial law and save a back at the expense of Australian workers.

No... pay the fvckers fairly and corporate Australia then values both Australian and Indian workers correctly on the level playing field.

---

Now of course that is just a single ticket issue. There are others. One of which is the Chinese Yuan. This is the single biggest ticket issue and I'm not sure why Trump hasn't suggested that the Chinese float it. They have been holding it artificially low. It's how they protect their industry an their employment. They undersell the entire country. The Chinese government basically pays us to buy their stuff for next to nothing. Imagine suddenly paying 10 times the price tomorrow for things from China you buy on ebay or aliexpress.
Think about it... What does that do to the world economy?

Well it makes jobs in Nigera, Brazil, Bangladesh and East Timor's unskilled labour worth more by making the Chinese skilled workers worth more.
At the same time it makes our highly skilled workers cheaper. Of course that seriously hurts China, but it levels the playing field.

There is of course more to it than that simplistic view but you get the gist.

When it comes to the Gerry Hervey's of the world, well that's a little more complex too. I won't defend what I agree is a protectionist behaviour.
He wants an uneven playing field. And there's your problem. The same one again.

[enf]

Since we produce bugger all here, it has to be imported regardless if by sea/air freight or by parcel post so its not so simple to say dont buy anything from OS.

Yes, it is!

If no one payed any tax then the system (for want of a better description) wouldn't function.

Buy the goods, pay the tax. Just because some (including me) have been getting things from OS easily and cheaply doesn't mean it's a right. It just means we were, and now we're not.

Time to stop whinging and figure out how to get around it if you can. Thus has it has always been in commercial transactions.

[Uncle Fester]

You're not good with game theory are you Nomeat?
Have you read Sun Tzu's "Art of War"?

The problem is that you have to play the game with some specific sets of rules.
Either you make the rules or you enforce somebody else's rules upon them.
If you make the rules, then you better be bloody sure that somebody like me isn't going to make you subject to your own.

Another suggestion. Join the Satanic Temple and see how they apply that logic.
If there is one thing religious idiots love, it's the 1st amendment, until they find themselves subject to it.

I am not much of a player and a terrible reader if it does not have "science" in front of it, just won't happen.
I do not belong to any groups, clubs or religions.
However, (there is ALWAYS a 'However') I do find myself agreeing with SOME(not the magic shit) aspects of LaVeyan Satanism.
Having only discovered it a few years ago, I find it discribes a way of thinking and seeing things I have had all my life.

Everybody has to find their own playing field anyway, if not create it.

I always managed to create mine because I normally do not fit in anybody else's.


Despite that, the gist of my post #8 WAS a call for a level playing field, but a different one.
We are being told the tax is leveling things for local shops. This brainwashing B.S makes me sick. Just another rule to make the rich richer.
I don't care if taxes are raised to level playing fields(like Norway) but this one does nothing to make Amazon pay proper tax in Australia while they can continue to resort to their (legal)loopholes like the rest of them.

You, the Gov and (almost)everybody else are ignoring the dangers of the widening gap between rich and poor. While in China this gap
has narrowed, which has lead to their strong economy, we are reversing SLOWLY towards a third world status.

I am pretty sure most will agree that too many are dependent on welfare but it is set to get much worse they way this inequality is heading.
I don't care if there are rich and poor, just don't want to end up in a third world country, where everywhere I go I could get bashed and robbed or victim of corrupt/power hungry police. There are signs of that here already but for now we can just blame that all on the refugees.

As for foreign underpayment here, I am quite sure the Indians working for AusPost or doing jobs where they have to report their income to the ATO are getting the official minimum wage.

Otherwise many are working unofficially in family business with and for the family, not necessarily for 'proper' money but have free food and lodge.
Many Chinese do the same.
That is their decision.
I don't see groundbreaking changes if they all suddenly had to receive the official minimum wage, other that the family business might go broke.


...and if everybody does what Enf does, they will notice and police that as well, 30% duty tax on all gifts, LOL.

[trash]

Yep, that's pretty much what most of us agree on Nomeat. I just see your way as the "tell it like I see it" which makes you an easier target for political opponents. They can see you coming and out manouver you.

The Satanic temple isn't anything but a political stunt. Though a very serious political stunt. It is of course a front for atheists. It gives them a political front because a tactic of the religious right is to say that atheists are not religion therefore have no say.
That is not what the 1st amendment is about. It's about equality for all which gives the right to be religious as much as it does not to be. The Satatic church and more so these days, The Satanic Temple is the religious stage of atheism.
"Oh but you're not a real religion". You do not get to determine what a religion is... 1st amendment does not descriminate. You create a test for what religion is and our religion will pass it or we will find another religion that already does or does not do it.

Satanism is a "me too" movement. Generally because the religious right misuse their positions of power to prop up 'their' religion which props up their constituents.
A common example is that a government meeting might start with a prayer. This isn't not permitted but it is kind of pointless and it intimidates those not in the group.
The Satanists come along as shake the place down. They ask for a jewish prayer after the christian one. The organisation reluctantly permits it. Not that they actually have that control because the 1st amendment says they cannot descriminate. The law permits prayer, it does not permit exclusion of it unless all are excluded equally. So the christian prayer gets said, then the jewish one. Tomorrow the Satanists turn up and ask for an islamic prayer to be included. They resist, but know that legal action is followign if they resist.
Then the Satanists demand that the Satanic prayer also be said. This is the straw that breaks the camel's back because none of the looney right christians are going to say the Satanic prayer. So it means, "everybody out of the pool!" And no prayers are said.

Reality is of course Satanists aren't devil worshipers or even believe that Satan is any kind of real entity.
Of course this argument gets tried in court. The christian right tries to demonstate that the satanists don't believe in Satan.
It doesn't matter what we believe in our religion. It's what you believe in yours. Exhibit A is the bible and these is mention of our deity. The Devil. Now if the devil isn't real, what else isn't real in this book?

He's your god, their your rules, you go to hell

Or as I like to say, "We at the Satanic church do not discriminate, we believe everybody can go to hell !"

[Uncle Fester]

A common example is that a government meeting might start with a prayer. This isn't not permitted but it is kind of pointless and it intimidates those not in the group.
The Satanists come along as shake the place down. They ask for a jewish prayer after the christian one. The organisation reluctantly permits it. Not that they actually have that control because the 1st amendment says they cannot descriminate. The law permits prayer, it does not permit exclusion of it unless all are excluded equally. So the christian prayer gets said, then the jewish one. Tomorrow the Satanists turn up and ask for an islamic prayer to be included. They resist, but know that legal action is followign if they resist.
Then the Satanists demand that the Satanic prayer also be said. This is the straw that breaks the camel's back because none of the looney right christians are going to say the Satanic prayer. So it means, "everybody out of the pool!" And no prayers are said.

Ha ha, perfect example how to to take action to change a situation rather than asking for it

I like to say "We are already in Hell. There is no where to go from here, so I must get the best out of it !"