The problem is it isn't the consumers who really pay the tax, it's the retailers. How exactly do you propose that the government tax overseas retailers. I can think of a few options but each one of them forces me to think be careful what you wish for . What you and the retailers seem to support is not good for anybody at all except for the government.
Whoops. Me thinks you hav e no understanding of how our GST works. At the end of the day, the final consumer or purchaser of the goods *always* pays the 10% GST.
When a retailer or any wholesalers purchase any item, they pay 10% GST on that item.
When they on-sell the item (be it wholesale or retail), they charge the next person in the chain 10% GST. They then claim the 10% they paid back and pass on the difference to the Grubbermint.
For anyone involved in manufacture, wholesale, or retail, GST is so much easier and simpler than what we had before (wholesale sales-tax which climed to 22.5%). It is also harder for people to cheat. As a manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, you never need to worry about GST. You pay it and get it back when you on-sell the item, so you don't need to factor GST into anything, because the end user pay it. It is really quite clean and simple.
If people import stuff directly, then Customs will charge them the 10% GST on the declared value. The Customs and Taxation departments have worked out that it is not worth their while to try to get the GST on items which are less than A$1,000- in value. Persumably because someone worked out tha tit costs them more than $100 to collect it. How they did that is beyond me, but it doesn't matter. The Australian Grubbermint does not need to charge the overseas retailer anything, they simply charge the person importing the goods. It really is plain and simple. So plain and simple, that even a moron like Gerrry should be able to understand it.
Gerry, his mate Solomon and the rest of the cronies trying to beat this up are just having a sulk because Australians aren't spending much money at the moment.
Their days of sucking people in with loss-leaders and high-interest interest-free deals are over. They've scammed all of those they can scam, and people are now taking a little longer and looking around. This might involve on-line stores, it might involve catalouges, it might even involve visting other shops. In some instances, people might choose to look overseas, but that would really be the minority.
Their huge markups (typically over 35%) for doing nothing other than employing morons who don't know shit from clay and lie to customers is starting to wear a little thin, but the number of people buying from overseas would be infintesimal. The savings aren't that great and it is a real pain with a high chance of getting ripped-off.
GST has absolutely nothing to do with it.
