Author:  Admin_Russell  Posted:  May 27, 2023 21:37  Subject:  Re: Australian Tax Implementation  Viewed:  83 times  Topic:  Administrative Cancel Reply

BrickLink ID Card Admin_Russell Location:  USA, California Member Since Contact Type Status May 9, 2017 Admin BrickLink Administrator

In Administrative, maxlego writes:    Hey Russell, Thought I better mention this as I don't think it has been mentioned in the help page or on this forum page. If a buyer was to purchase in the US just say and use US currency as payment, would he/she be subject to GST? The reason I mention this is because technically US or any other currency other then Australian dollars is not subject to tax or GST because other currencies are not legal tender in Australia. Many years ago I dealt with a tax auditor that explained a lot of the ins and outs of importing/exporting and the things you can claim and not claim, etc. One thing that stood out was if you accepted a payment other then Australian dollars, it was not subject to tax unless you converted it to Australian dollars. So if you never converted it, it would not be part of your taxable income. Now at the time, I thought that would be way too complicated to not declare all overseas income unless they paid in Australian dollars or you converted the currencies, especially if you didn't use the currencies for a few months or even years. So I just declared it all anyway even though I didn't need to, unless I converted the currencies. Usually I use other currencies to purchase stock from other countries where it is legal tender. Now I would understand that if a buyer used Australian currency to purchase something from the US and converted it to US dollars, that would still be subject to GST as the buyer originally used Australian currency. But what happens if you have the currency on hand? I would assume many sellers in Australia are accepting US dollars as payment because of the Bricklink fees being in USD as it is easier to pay those fees in the same currency. Now this comes to thought, Bricklink fees will be subject to GST too. So does that mean that the fees will be in Australian currency or still in US currency? The reason above should still apply if paying the fees in USD with USD. Now this may have all changed now as I learnt this about 13 years ago and laws and taxes may have changed but not to my knowledge at the moment so I thought I better mention all of this. I'm sure this has probably been brought up in the past when US state sales tax and VAT was first implemented by Bricklink. So it would be good to find out if this still applies or it has changed in recent years in regards to using other currencies and whether it is subject to GST or not! Thank you. Brett. Thanks for bringing up this issue, Brett. I will ask our tax team about currency, but I would be very surprised at this point if this is something they have not considered. We work months in advance of any deployment, going through every detail, and I've not heard that collection currency was a problem in any country so far. For the fees, they will be charged in US dollars and this is how they will be shown on your invoice. If you are an Australian GST registered seller, though, and you upload your details to your BrickLink account, you will not be charged GST on your invoice at all. This will be left to account for when you handle the taxes on your business.

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Re: Australian Tax Implementation - maxlego (15802)

Hey Russell, Thought I better mention this as I don't think it has been mentioned in the help page or on this forum page. If a buyer was to purchase in the US just say and [...] (13 months ago, May 27, 2023, to Administrative)

Message Has 1 Reply:

Re: Australian Tax Implementation - maxlego (15802)

[...] Thanks Russell, it would be good to get some clarification on this. [...] That's interesting. So only GST registered sellers will be exempt from GST for Brickink [...] (13 months ago, May 28, 2023, to Administrative)

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