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Peter, it is only partially operating that way. While, like you said, a whole infrastructure has to be created, staffed and funded, it will not be in Australia. The overseas retailers will have to do it all and carry the cost.
They will have to collect the GST at the purchase time. They will have to keep records and, I am guessing, lodge the equivalent of the Business Activity Statements to the ATO and also send the collected GST to the ATO.
I can see some retailers simply saying no, some retailers caving in and some retailers starting to charge us extra fee on the top of GST for the administrative work. Why not, everybody is ripping us off already anyway.
And then there are giants like Amazon who said no to try to force us to their Australian site which is way more expensive than their US site.
Just imagine the rest of the world joining the tax grab and making the system impossibly complicated...
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