Quote:
Originally Posted by auspex
Canada manages to enforce it on a great many companies selling goods to Canadians from the US (and yes, we pay GST on e-books).
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Taxes and duties on "goods" crossing the border into the country of import are almost universally the responsibility of the importer not the exporter. Tax treaties generally apply to income and capital (to, for example, provide relief from double taxation and prevention of evasion of income and capital taxes), not duties and sales taxes, and make it clear that taxes are not payable in a country unless that entity has a presence there (the Canada/USA Tax Convention is similar).
As I have already said in an earlier post a country may create legislation to enforce its sellers to pay the sales taxes of another country in which the seller does not have a presence . But as we have seen, countries have enough trouble collecting their own taxes without signing themselves up to collecting the taxes or enforcing the taxes of other countries too unless they are in a cartel with an overarching government covering the countries (such as the EU has) to enforce that.
But this thread is about NZ and as far as I am aware NZ has no tax treaty that requires businesses outside of its own jurisdiction to pay GST on imports into NZ - they are always the responsibility of the NZ importer. I have already said that a tax expert has informally called the NZ requirement a publicity stunt.
You need to explain specifically how the Canadian/USA tax treaty/conventions(s) work in enforcing through law (not by jawboning) the foreign exporter without a presence in Canada to pay Canadian taxes on exported soft products, such as eBooks, when they cross the electronic border. As far as I am aware there is no such requirement in the USA/Canada Tax Convention but there may be other US legislation (I am no expert on US tax law but I take it you are and can clarify that). Of course, the US exporter may elect to voluntarily pay the tax on soft goods of another country in which it does not have a presence (as indeed, the likes of Kobo, Amazon, Netflix, are doing with respect to NZ).