yep thats right
This moron is in charge of Australia's federal budget
Where does Joe Hockey, Australia's treasurer, get his data from? While The Register has no ideological opposition to the notion of a “Netflix tax” – that is, that a download bought by an Australian in Australia should be subject to the same 10 per cent GST whether its source is Netflix or locals like Fetch TV or Quickflix – we …
@Diogenes. Seriously?
A road project commissioned without mandate by the last Tory, in-the-pockets-of-big-business, shower of shinola:
- using a business case so dodgy they wouldn't release it (that from the released summary still showed a negative ROI even with stretched assumption),
-using contracts rushed through without oversight just prior to an election they knew they would likely lose to an opposition who had stated that they would cancel the project and who took that pledge to the election,
- using cushy "side letters" that guaranteed eye-wateringly substantial break payments to the contractors even if the project was subsequently cancelled, the very costs you are whining about.
If you want to whinge about the lefties wasting money then talk about the desal plant done by the last Commie, in-the-pockets-of-the-unions, shower of shinola - now *that* was a CFMEU-driven rort if ever there was one.
If you scroll to the bottom of the page on the Australian Google Play site, it clearly says "All prices include GST" for apps, books, movies and TV shows, etc, so hopefully this is a true statement, and the GST is indeed rendered to the ATO.
Interestingly, if you click on "Devices", it takes you to the Google Store page, and there is no statement about GST there as far as I can tell. I have bought a few Nexus devices from the Google Play site in the past (before they moved "Devices" to the new Google Store). The dealings were with a Google Singapore subsidiary, and while some of the invoices stated that the invoice price included Tax, some indicated no tax was collected. Where Tax was shown, the amount was not always 1/11 of the full invoice price, which it should be for the Australian GST of 10%. Also the Invoice was not labelled as a "Tax Invoice", and there was no ABN, which suggests to me that the invoice would not meet the requirements of a GST Receipt for Australian Tax purposes. In other words, it would appear that Google Singapore sometimes collected some tax for somebody, but it isn't clear where that tax was sent.
I just checked a few recent receipts from Play Store purchases - music, movie rental, Android games - and they all say "Includes GST of A$0.00"
Perhaps when they say "All prices include GST" they mean they are paying the GST which they are legally required to pay... which is nothing...
Facts? why would he bother with them?
The point about governments is that nothing is ever their fault.
When a political party is in opposition, they will blame the government for all manner of things it has little control over and insist they fix these things, complaining when they don't. Unwisely, though seemingly inevitably, they go on to promise that, if elected, they will sort it out.
Once they get in, they are then faced with exactly the same situation as the previous government and exactly the same inability or, being in the pockets of the same commercial interests, unwillingness to effect the changes and improvements they had been bleating about for the previous months and years.
It's all the previous government's fault, don't you know? They left the budget is such a bad state that, sadly, we can't do what we promised . . . (Never mind that the claims of disastrous circumstances have been debunked not only by leading local and international economists but by treasury themselves.)
So, because it can't possibly be the (current) government's fault, it has to be someone else's. Once the rhetoric of blaming the last government* wears too thin even for politicians, they have to start finding other reasons why they are breaking their promises or things aren't going as well as they made out that they would.
A ha! It's the Google and the Apple! Those mega corporations are fleecing Australia of our rightful income and now that Netflix has arrived, they are going to fleece us further still!!!
It's true - income generated from Australian customers is not generating the Australia tax revenue that it could if everything was done exactly as the government wanted. But the idea that this, finally, is the missing piece - the extra money that is missing - is ridiculous. And that is what they are, essentially, implying. The 'billions' comment might be utterly, ridiculously false and unsupportable even in the most fanciful of best-case scenarios but that doesn't mean it won't get picked-up by talk-back radio and believed by those whose main political 'thought process' is to get outraged by whatever trumped up claims are being made by the party they have chosen as the one best supporting their personal prejudices and self-image.
This is not the domain of one side or the other - it is the perennial bluster and finger-pointing that our politicians engage in to avoid having to ever really do anything or take responsibility for their actions or inaction.
It's been oft remarked that if our 'leaders' (of any stripe in nearly any country) spent any appreciable percent of their time and effort (let alone our money) on the job of actually trying to make the lives of the people better then the whole world would be nearly unrecognisable to those of us accustomed to the constant bickering and positioning and unwavering self-interest that dominates our political systems.
* - Despite the assurances we get each time that the new government will "stop the blame game" and "get down to business".
According to the ABS in 2006 there were 7.8 million households with a 1.3% annual increase. So lets say there's currently 9 million households.
So if *every* household takes out a $12/mth subscription. it'd be $1.296b/yr or $129.6m in GST
But even by 2020 the most optimistic projection for Netlfix penetration for any country is 35%. Which bring it down to about $45.36m/yr in GST
Yeah I can see the Treasurer's point, it's only a few zero's short of a few billions.
Notes:
ABS households: http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features20Dec+2010
Netflix penetration by country: http://www.statista.com/statistics/324568/penetration-rate-netflix-country/
Budget savings and expenses are measured over 4 years (for example see here: http://www.budget.gov.au/2014-15/content/bp2/html/bp2_expense-06.htm).
An extra $500M of revenue annually is a budget saving of billions of dollars.
Perhaps the author should improve their own economic literacy before pointing the figure at others.
Most likely from the anti-pirate brigade, who claim that Austfailians download eleventytrazillion dollars worth of films each day.
Quite how we download as much as they claim is beyond me, its not like we all have the NBN or something.
Also, Yes Minister looks like a serious documentary compared to the tuckfards who run this shothile.