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by bentpins 496 days ago
I live in New Zealand - until 2019 things used to work this way for us too. A law was introduced to require overseas sellers selling more than $60,000 NZD/year into New Zealand to collect pay our Goods and Services Tax. Now Amazon/Temu/AliExpress others all collect 15% NZ GST at the checkout. It's pretty seamless as a buyer, just that GST is not usually shown until checkout unlike domestic sites. https://www.ird.govt.nz/gst/gst-for-overseas-businesses/gst-...
3 comments
kiratp 496 days ago
> just that GST is not usually shown until checkout unlike domestic sites.

This still puts domestic sites at a significant disadvantage.

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danpalmer 496 days ago
This is distinct from import taxes. I used to work for a retailer that sold to the US. We collected sales tax (which is not GST/VAT, semantically different, and you have to pay a US company to calculate it for you), but still had to put a limit of $800 per package in order to not get hit by import duties.

I believe Temu/Shein/etc collect US sales tax based on the destination address, but that is insufficient.

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toast0 496 days ago
> you have to pay a US company to calculate it for you

You don't have to pay a company to calculate it for you, but it is difficult to calculate. I think all the states with sales tax assert that the correct sales tax for a delivered item is based on the location of delivery, and determining the tax jurisdictions from the location of delivery is complex. Using the city field of the address is often wrong, because that's really just the name of the post office that serves the delivery location, not an indiciation of what city (if any) the delivery location is in.

Once you've determined the jurisdictions, you also need to confirm the rates for the shipped items and collect and remit the taxes.

It's a lot harder than schemes where there's a single rate for a country or at most one rate per top level subdivision of a country, where delivery addresses almost always have the subdivision clearly marked.

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danpalmer 495 days ago
In the general case, sales tax changes at the building level. While you are not legally required to pay a company to calculate it, US sales tax is prohibitively complex to the point that paying a company to calculate it is practically required.
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gsky 496 days ago
Seamlessly putting local businesses out of business
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