Quote:
Originally Posted by AnotherCat
In all, it does look to me that a good part of NZ's action is actually a publicity stunt of a "calming the natives" nature (as I mentioned was the informally expressed view of a tax specialist).
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I believe what brought the current situation to a head was Netflix entering the NZ market (hence the reason for labeling it the 'Netflix Tax'). Basically, Netflix markets to NZers, charges us in NZD, and has a content catalogue specific to NZ. Yet when they arrived, they outright stated in public that as an international company they no obligation to charge GST, so they didn't.
Needless to say, the local alternative, Lightbox (itself very new to market) cried "Hang on a minute...!!", and as they say, the rest is history.
And for those crying "They should absorb the cost rather than complain!", 15% is not an insignificant amount to absorb, especially for what I imagine could be a fairly low margin business to begin with (if you aren't a big multinational anyway).