First it was reported that the ‘Netflix tax’ was being rejected, then Fairfax reported it was back in play. Now Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey has confirmed in a press conference that the government is planning to implement a new tax on digital services and Australian consumers will be asked to pick up the bill.
This means, essentially, that Australians will be paying a form of GST on services like Steam that amounts to a 10% increase on digital products. Joe Hockey expects this change to bring in $350 million in revenue over four years.
Currently users aren’t being charged GST on digital services like Steam and Netflix, which certain local retailers have flagged as being unfair, since they have to charge consumers more for the same product in certain cases — this applies especially to video games. Currently products imported into Australia avoid the GST provided they are under $1000. A Productivity Commission stated it would essentially be more hassle than it’s worth to charge GST on those products.
Digital products, however, that’s a different ballgame.
According to Hockey:
What we’re doing is going to digital providers overseas and saying ‘can you apply the GST to the products you provide into Australia?’. They [the tech companies] are agreeable to it. It’s not their profits [being taxed]. It’s a tax collected and they remit it back to the country where that [consumption tax] occurs.
Legislation will be tabled before the house tomorrow night during the delivery of the budget.
Via Gizmodo
Comments
153 responses to “Joe Hockey Confirms He Wants Australians To Pay Tax On Steam Games”
I’m surprised it’s taken this long to be honest.
Think about this for a moment. Steam claims they charge the prices set by local publishers. That price takes GST into account as local retailers pay GST. Therefore Steam should absorb the GST and there should be no price rise for major releases. So if Steam raises price, that puts paid to the BS about publishers setting prices.
That still doesn’t account for charging those prices in $US. That adds another 20% to the game price.
Stop charging the same price for a digital copy as a physical one, then we can talk.
Or more in some cases.
Better be made of gold.
more like they need fixing price for a digital but no Let Tax that SHIT, let OZ pay more . (destroy internet freedom) 🙁
Charging the same price as AU retail in US$ is far more of a cost impost than GST.
Joe Hockey should go #$/^ himself.
Tax himself? I’m guessing that’s what you mean.
I originally wrote that and then thought that may be a little below the belt.
zing
Hockey tax himself? Ha! You’re funny.
Just like the politicians in Canberra will likely hide there own metadata, while boasting it’s effectiveness.
Bloody dream on local retailers? I did not know 10% = 50% increase in price compare to overseas. How about let don’t force digital games to add on ‘Australia Tax’ and sell it at the price it should then I don’t mind paying 10% tax.
Digital price is already inflated due to pressure from local retailers, don’t make digital cost more than brick and mortar store. How about Steam credits? Do I have to pay 10% extra for each credit purchase?
actually a really interesting point – how would it be dealt with when paying from a Steam Wallet instead of direct monetary transaction? Do wallet codes count as ‘points’ which have already been paid for? Or are they considered currency and would subsequently be taxed when used?
10% tax on foreign currency exchange
actually diddnt they say there was to be “no new taxes”
Direct Quote: “No cuts to Education, no cuts to Health, no changes to Pensions, no changes to GST, no cuts to ABC or SBS under any Govt. I lead.” – Tony Abbot
http://i.imgur.com/WjnNFY9.jpg
Good shop. Would do again/10.
http://www.rohansalmond.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tony-abbott-carbon-tax-billboard-460×250-1.jpg
Inb4 you’re reminded about every other politician lying through their teeth.
Direct Quote: “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead” – Julia Gillard
Let’s go back further: “There’ll be no GST under a government I lead” – John Howard
Remember that time he took the GST as a policy and fronted an election with that sole intention, and still got voted in?
It’s a little different than saying one thing to get voted in and then back flipping…
Do we have to start incorporating GST on dividends from selling Steam Trading cards…
not unless you make at least $50k annually solely from Steam card trading :p
Don’t you technically have to declare all income once you reach a certain level?
I didn’t think it was specific to each source of income… The again you don’t declare ebay sales either do you?
If you’re running a business out of eBay, then yes – you actually are supposed to declare your sales.
Private sales are different and do not include GST.
I’d expect them to tax depositing money into your steam wallet. So we probably should dump a heap of cash into our steam wallets now…
I did a test recently, GTA5 is $74.99 US, that’s $94.92 Aus and $104.412 with GST.
It actually allows Bricks and Mortar to compete. EBGames is $89.95 with GST.
Now if you use a VPN or buy a Steam code for $30 somewhere than the whose system falls apart. And if Steam is going to start charging me GST than I expect prices to be listed in Australian Dollars so that I don’t need to do the maths.
I really don’t think GST is the problem, I think the fact that we are getting screwed is the problem.
Games in the US are about $59.99 US or $75.93 Australian, with GST that’s $83.523, which I think is pretty fair.
If prices are set by publishers, as Steam claims, it SHOULD NOT increase the cost of games. The publishers price already takes GST into account. Let’s see how Steam handles that. If they raise the cost of games, it makes a mockery of their claim that they use the price set by publishers.
As if the Publishers are going to wear the GST. It will be added on. The most likely case here is they’ll redo the store and it will be in Australian dollars and games will still be as expensive.
Even when a game is $9,99 US it’s still on our side for $49.99 US. And now the GST will be on top of that.
If they made the prices fair, I wouldn’t give a damn about GST.
The local publishers already set to price for Steam AU store so that they match the retail stores. And that price is inclusive of GST (the retail stores must include GST!) Now do you get it?
So who pockets the amount which would otherwise go as GST? Valve do.
How about Joe also asks that steam charges in AUD for a start! Then ask them to stop them charging me more than retail. Then he can happily have my 10%
Don’t be silly – if they charged less, then 10% of that price would also be less, therefore lower tax revenues for Joe. If anything, he’ll be encouraging them to charge MORE in order to boost the GST take.
Damn straight
I haven’t studied up on tax law, but I have the suspicion that if they’re going to start charging GST, I think they will have to charge in AUD. Seems to be what happened with VAT and them charging pounds or euros.
Don’t we already pay double for no reason? If I had the choice between $120 or $60 + 10% I’ll go with the latter.
Yeah…check this out:
https://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs
Now we get to pay double plus 10% GST because trying to get publishers to charge us an equivalent AUD price or just not doubling the USD price for no reason is harder than just fleecing the taxpayers.
Any publisher who is setting the price on Steam to match retail outlets will almost definitely reduce the pre-tax price accordingly if Steam starts charging GST. It’ll be all the games that don’t have special Australian prices that will increase.
If this was to actually go through I would inform everyone possible, that is not already aware, where or how to buy legit steam keys and avoid the tax all together.
Any chance you could inform me of this? I’m fairly new to PC gaming and have only ever bought off Steam and the Humble Store (which if I understand correctly, will also get the 10% increase if it goes through).
cdkeyhouse or kinguin or g2a would be first place to look. Otherwise we sail the high seas, aarrgh me hearties.
As solutlon said. Ther are also steam users that you can buy games from. Not sure who but if you go to whirlpool forum and ask in the steam thread people will let you know.
Well, time to jump ship. Or just pirate, yaarrrr pirate sounds good. Shiver me timbers, he ain’t getting tax from me, I will swim if I have to.
ummm duh, most steam keys are region free so just buy it from a European reseller or what have you, change your steam billing address and ta da, gst free
Unless they add Australia to the region-restriction on keys. Thanks to the differences in price points between markets. Eg: somewhere like [Turkmenistan – I don’t know the actual countries with the ultra-low prices] the average wage is about one twentieth of ours, so they get a reduced price, but keys purchased in their currency can’t be gifted to other regions to avoid having US customers use a VPN to pretend they’re from Turkmenistan, buy a AAA game for $15, then use that key on their US account.
Change Steam from USD to AUD then we can talk… Don’t charge us a tax on an inflated international currency.
If they tax Steam at their current prices then the cost of GTA 5 will go up to $105. If they convert the inflated USD price to AUD then we’re looking at a little over $80. That in my mind would at least soften the blow a little.
They will have to in order to comply.
Yaarrr, I’m on yer side with this. It would be convinient to just see the actual total price, rather than calc the exchange rate and then the exchange fees and whatever online fees go along with that.
then they will region lock australia….
so its: game+steam+tax+markup
or game key region free from a key site
yeah somehow I dont think I will be using steam
goods and services tax on anything you get on the internet… great
Turnbull: “We need to stop people pirating! It’s destroying the very fabric of our industries here in Australia!”
Hockey: “LOL”
US PSN looking better everyday!!
Since Joe hockey is a neoliberal zealot and class warfare enforcer, he and the Liberals – instead of taxing the rich more , increasing the tax rate for corporations, collecting from offshore tax havens etc – he won’t touch those because those elite are his friends, donors and owners.
that means to balance the budget the liberals need to screw over the rest of us to make up for the class and corporate privilege and corruption that left a hole in the budget. theft from the middle and lower classes makes up from what’s been stolen, and taxing Steam is just another example.
,
Oh and Labor is not much better.
And no, I’m not Green, socialist, Libertarian or any other stupid idiot-ology
How is implementing gst on digital games a tax on the poor and middle class? GST by its very nature taxes the rich more than any class as it’s a consumption based tax.
The rich tend to consume a much smaller proportion of their earnings though.
It’s also possible to avoid paying GST on big ticket items if you can justify it as a business expense, which is easier for business owners and higher income earners.
The idea that gst affects the rich more is pretty blatantly false.
GST is basically regressive (you pay less of your income as you earn more) but is a bit harder to avoid than income tax, so high income earners, while still paying less, wind up paying more than they would than an income tax increase pitched at a similar level.
It comes down to the question of which option makes it harder for the rich to avoid paying tax.
Of course, we all know that Steam will wind up just adding 10% to the top of all Australian charges…
I should point out that I dont disagree that more money may be raised from the rich, just really disagree with the sentiment that it hits the rich more.
Don’t disagree with GST necessarily, in a lot of ways I think it works well I just hate that ideology @phlaiman mentioned.
Agree with your points though.
Poor people spend a higher proportion of their income on goods and services.
What’s stupid about Green politics? Or socialism, for that matter?
There’s the issue- “I’m not part of that team” mentality and I don’t like this major party now so I’ll go with the other one.
We should be looking at their policies and then decide where to vote from there. Which does not happen, it’s basically a popularity contest and whoever can get the best/ favourable media coverage. Reading about all the current BS now just makes this depressed because I know it won’t change next election either.
Actually Hockey revealed this afternoon that there are a whole 30 international corporations (non to be named, so we can be sure it’s no one huge like Apple, Microsoft or Google) that has been classed as tax avoiders that Hockey has found a way to get the back tax plus fines… All of which will be locked up in legal bullshit internationally.
So much hyperbole… Class warfare! I really feel for your privileged oppression….
That’s alright comrade! Tax the rich more than the 42% already! Those utter arseholes! Make it so that if you are rich you are no better off at the end of the day than a minimum wage employee! Bread rations… Rations for all comrade!
Wonderful plan! Why bother someone else can always pay your way!
Unless you classify 30k a year as ‘rich’ then no they’re not even close even if it were 50%.
90% and they might actually be getting close to the upper middle class.
They’d go elsewhere…. Somewhere with less leeches.
I’m genuinely interested to see how they attempt to do this, since on past performance this government couldn’t legislate its way out of a wet paper bag, let alone tackle something as nuanced as this.
Right? I love how when they were in Opposition they used to slam the hell out of the Labor government, but the volume of legislation the minority Gillard government passed was actually really impressive.
The Abbott government just likes to squeal about the “feral” Senate instead and make excuses like it’s not their shitty policies and budgets getting in the way.
I don’t really like the scorecard being kept on the volume of legislation passed by the previous government, since I don’t know how much of it was any good.
But that’s not the point of this article, anyway. Definitely a popcorn kinda budget this year, should be more entertaining than last year since anything they do that’s just as wacky will suffer the same fate as last year’s measures.
They really should have DD’d after last year but it’s all about them getting and keeping the jobs, not actually, y’know, RUNNING THE DAMN COUNTRY.
I would have loved a good DD (not a euphemism) but no matter how much they threaten it, they never would. I’m interested in seeing how long it’ll be for ScoMo to knife Hockey in the back and take his job, which if the budget goes down like a lead balloon two years running could happen sooner rather than later.
Scott Morrison would put us all in video game camps as treasurer, probably. And not the good kind of video game camps.
This is meant to be a pretty boring budget. As was always intended. It won’t be though – due to last years debacle.
The plan, aka what John Howard did for years:
Budget 1: Nasty, cuts a lot of stuff that ordinary people care about.
Budget 2: Boring. By this stage people had forgotten about a lot of Budget 1’s cuts. War chest for re-election grows.
Budget 3: PORK BARREL! YOU GET MONEY, YOU GET MONEY, YOU ALL GET MONIES! And we get re-elected.
The reality, as per the current Government:
Budget 1: Nasty, cuts a lot of st- OH SHIT A WILD SENATE APPEARS
Budget 2: Awww crap, we’re going to have to put in new taxes and more cuts, just so that…
Budget 3: PORK BARREL! YOU G-where’s the money? What do you mean we’ve been voted out?
(And before anybody points it out, Howard perfected this but yes Labour did their fair share of this during office as well).
Get publishers to stop charging inflated prices on digital content in Australia and I’ll happily embrace a 10% tax on my digital purchases.
Until then, I’ll continue to purchase my Steam keys from key stores online like OzGameShop.
From what I understand, that’s what they’re trying to do – go “to digital providers overseas and saying ‘can you apply the GST to the products you provide into Australia?’.” This’d have to include key resellers like GMG and OzGS… I’m still wondering if this “asking” is “a polite request” or “a polite request with ‘the right to sell to Australians’ held over the edge of a cliff”… I assume the latter, unfortunately.
That’s where key sellers fall into what I guess could be considered a loophole.
Technically, they’re selling you a physical item, the same way as if you walked into a JB or EB and grabbed it off the shelf. They just cut out having to actually deliver the item by just emailing you the code instead.
So they’d be under the taxing of physical goods into Australia.
EDIT: Should mention, I’m not a lawyer or anything, it’s just how I see it.
Most key sellers these days only ever have digital product keys, not keys copied from a physical retail box. So it has actually never been a physical product to start with.
I’ve only ever seen one site that used actual retail copies and just emailed you a picture of the code from it.
Incorrect.
Almost all keys I buy from such sites come from boxed copies. In fact, it’s likely all of them – it’s just that not all of them send you a photo of the physical key.
Just because you didn’t get a photo of the key, doesn’t mean it didn’t come from a physical copy.
Likely all of them?
That’s more unlikely than if I had claimed none of the key sellers ever use retail box copies at all.
Some games release digital ‘online’ editions and the likes, good luck finding that key in a physical box. Some games start digitally and later get limited physical releases, some don’t even make it to physical releases.
I said almost all keys I have bought. That was in reference to my own experiences. And I know this due to receiving photographs of most of the keys I have bought.
Wasn’t saying all keys are physical copies.
They have absolutely nothing to threaten them with… There’s no way they can block Australians accessing foreign stores short of a massive and wide ranging internet filter, and good fucking luck getting that through.
They can’t control what website people submit their credit card details or such to in order to pay for something. They can’t control emails sent with codes for digital products, the list of things they can’t possibly control goes on and on.
Also, a basic VPN can make it look like you’re buying from elsewhere anyway… So it is pointless even trying.
The applying of the tax isn’t the problem here (although that in itself is basically impossible…), the problem is that in Australia we already pay stupidly inflated prices (especially via things like Steam) as opposed to the grey imports from places like OzGS.
As for the implementation being impossible… well, for one, you could just use a US paypal address or something …. you’re getting the product digitally so the address check is just for credit card purposes…
And secondly, They’d have go to every website ever that sells things to Australia and politely ask them to add a tax (and then pass it on to the government). The overhead is stupid. They’ll go after the big ticket items like Steam and Netflix and ignore everything else… it will just push people from Steam to GOG or whatever.
No one here cares about paying the 10% GST. What we care about is why we have to already pay 40-50% more than other parts of the world for the same digital item. Adding a tax to that is just kicking the customer while they are down.
I know it’s supposed to protect local businesses but it wont. We’ll just find another website that doesn’t have the tax. If publishers and distributors treated us (both digitally and retail) as part of the same damn planet then we wouldn’t have this problem.
Yes, I’ve gathered that – I only buy from Steam directly when there’s no better option. The way the statement reads makes it sound like they’re going after anyone who sells to Australians, is all, and I’m concerned that the sites I normally go through are big enough to come up. I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know exactly what leverage the gov’t is planning to use to encourage overseas businesses to play ball – I find it hard to imagine they’d be stupid enough to publicly consider this if they couldn’t enforce it… *stifles laugh* okay, maybe I could. 😛
I have no idea how they plan to enforce this… Companies already grey import stuff (eg Kogan) … its gonna be even harder to police and implement stuff for overseas businesses.
I was bored enough and grumblebumy enough one day to write to the ACCC about it. The response is basically “tough shit.”
Government: ‘Shit, them video gaem things are actually making money! Jeeves! Get me in on some of that action!’
Dickmen.
Jeeves Dickman. I envision some cartoon villain twirling his moustache and steepling his fingers.
Jeeves Dickman so wears a tophat.
Well technically speaking they said that a few decades back with GST. This is just fumbling around trying to figure out how to make GST work with importing low cost goods that circumvent customs.
“Confirms”?
Still needs to pass legislation first. Start protesting to your local senator about this.
Most of Hockey’s last budget confirmations have been scrapped – dont see why this shouldnt be any different
So Joe cuts funding to game industries in Australia, but now they still want more money from gaming?1 F*ck yourself Joe!
Thankfully I’m sure there will be plenty of steam key resellers who will help us through this.
My concern is that like the actual Medicare changes that they brought in without actually having to pass legislation through the houses, they’ll fiddle the system to do something like that with GST on intangibles and imported goods under $1000.
Even if they did table legislation, does anyone know: would Labor would be against it? I mean, I’ve no idea, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of our illustrious Opposition Leader, Bull Sherpa, for… weeks? months?
It’s stuff to do with “taxing that new tangled technology thing” so Labor are in full support of this extension of the GST
Good point. Dammit.
Is there any actual argument against this apart from just not wanting to pay tax? Its always seemed to me as a fair point of contention for local retailers even if it doesn’t explain the entire reason for such a significant difference in prices.
I think it’s a fair point of contention too, but I think it’s the fact that this is 10% on top of the grossly inflated prices we have to suffer for being Australians.
If Steam started charging us in AUD instead of USD, which I suspect they might have to in order to comply properly, even with 10% on top I think we’d actually end up paying less than we have been.
Because nobody is going to buy a game that clearly shows up as over $100 AUD on Steam. Which I think is part of how a lot of the digital stores get people, I guarantee there are a lot out there who don’t even realise what they’re actually paying.
That’s assuming that Steam don’t whack their own Australia tax on it once it’s in AUD (which is something glass jaw Joe doesn’t give a shit about). I think if it was the case where it was legit converted to AUD without a magic mark up, most people would be like “Yeah, that’s fair enough.” (I know I would be.)
Then people just keep using key sites as they have been.
I buy more Steam games from key sites than I do through Steam itself for precisely that reason.
For example, last Steam game I bought was Mortal Kombat X… Got it for less than $50 AUD with the season pass. On Steam proper that costs $90 USD.
Well, that’s good for you, but not everyone knows that, or what sites to use. I don’t, for example. I use the Steam store or GMG or Humble, etc. If you could point me in the direction of cheap and legit, I would love that.
However, necessity breeds invention.
My technologically illiterate mother rang me up to ask how she could get Netflix last year. I explained over the phone.
Never underestimate people hearing there are cheaper ways, and then seeking out those ways to circumnavigate something like this.
Heck, I may or may not know of a guy with a pet parrot, wooden leg and hooked hand who just celebrated his 80th birthday.
…I know, that’s why I asked.
@renne
Ozgameshop.com is a good place to start. You already know about GMG and Humble and I assume about GOG too.
All those sites are usually cheaper than Steam. That in itself proves the point.
The difference between $50 on Humble and $40 on some semi-legit key site is minimal compared to the $90+ RRP on Steam.
@inquisitorsz I don’t think I’ve heard about GOG but I see it’s DRM-free which I am so here for. Also I never really thought about Ozgameshop for keys, I’ve only ever used it for my PS games. Excellent, thank you so much!
@renne whoops. Sorry got caught up in storytelling and not in answering.
Check out another site called Nuuvem. Brazillion. Legit Steam Keys, often can be bought without the need of a VPN set to Brazil.
@quiz_b not a worry, mate 🙂 Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll check them out too!
I used to use GMG a lot but not so much these days, and Humble is great pretty much always. Amazon’s keys can be surprisingly cheap sometimes also.
Another site I use a bit though is game-mart.com… To be honest, when I first came across the site I was cautious because of how cheap some games actually were at times. But I looked up a few online reviews and there didn’t seem to be anything shady going on, so I tried them. So to date I’ve bought a fair few games from there, paid with PayPal and never had an issue.
Thanks heaps! Do you have any issue with buying from Amazon since they have the “don’t sell to outside the USA” thing? I’m assuming I’d need to get an American-addressed account which is totally doable, that it’s not just a VPN thing, but I guess since it’s just keys they’re selling, there shouldn’t be any issue with installation or anything? Is there any issue with non-US credit cards?
Also I’ll check out game-mart – I prefer to pay for stuff with paypal too so it’s good you’ve not had a problem with that.
You could also try installing this add-on for Chrome and/or Firefox.
http://www.enhancedsteam.com/
It shows you the cheapest source for a product on steam when you go to the website – http://store.steampowered.com/
I use it all the time.
Ohhh that’s a really good add-on. And it’s got a whole bunch of handy features.
Thanks a lot, I can see this being super useful!
There is one issue: as Transientmind pointed out on Giz, the collection costs for this are likely to be so enormous that this will make the tax practically redundant.
We already pay too much because digital content enjoys a 30%+ markup before currency conversion which seems to get slightly worse every day. Now they want to slap 10% on top of that without fixing the problem. That’s like saying “instead of cleaning this infected wound and putting a fresh dressing on it, I’m going to save money by not giving you painkillers then rub some salt in there.
It’s not the tax, I think people have a problem with the government recognising Steam as a revenue stream they can tax, but doing nothing to get us a fair deal.
On the face of it, it’s got both positives and negatives. Here’s where I’m at:
Positive: It’s an existing tax that hasn’t been collected, so collecting it finally is probably about due.
Negative: The productivity commission has looked into collecting GST on foreign purchases before, for physical goods, and the cost of processing collection was about four times the revenue earned, making it a really, really stupid idea.
Mitigation of the negative: The commission was looking primarily at physical goods and did factor in customs costs, but it looks like the bulk of the cost was identifying foreign companies and providing support to them. This is not a cost which would change if they were to try and identify ALL companies providing digital products into Australia.
HOWEVER. The way this is being talked about by Hockey, I suspect they’re not actually going to be policing it and paying for that, but relying on a voluntary cooperation. The big names who can’t hide that they’re operating here, like Steam or Apple or Netflix. They won’t have to monitor every digital package the way customs would.
This ‘voluntary’ system is going to be unfair and exploitable by smaller providers who don’t sign up to charge or pay the GST, but is the only way to keep tax-collection costs down. As soon as you have to start trying to measure the unmeasurable, you’re hemorrhaging money.
***
BONUS ROUND POTENTIAL POSITIVE:
(Slash, wishful thinking)
OK, here’s a thought. Digital purchases are currently artificially inflated by publishers on Steam to price-match (to a degree) with Australian brick-and-mortar retail.
Austrlian retail which includes GST.
In theory, it’s the final price which should match brick-and-mortar retail, bringing Digital and Physical together.
If price-matching is their goal, we shouldn’t actually notice an increase in prices with the implementation of GST, because it’s not something that’s being added to physical retail. The goal is to make digital the same price as physical? Well that should include GST. All the prices listed on the Steam storefront should include GST in the total, not adding it after like US sales tax. There’s a precedent for this with VAT.
Combined with the change they’ll have to make to charging in AUD (bypassing horrific exchange rates and fees), we may actually find the prices stay the same or get effectively lower.
So, how would that work if I used a vpn set to the usa when steaming?
Probably the same way it currently does. If you use a VPN and appear as a US IP when purchasing on the Steam store, you still get Australian region-locks and Australian pricing if Steam has previously detected your region to be an Australian account. If you jump into your account settings, you’ll see your ‘store region’ setting. I haven’t tried changing it before.
Pretty stoked to be leaving Australia in 2 months :3
Take me with you!
I don’t care where your going (but fingers crossed it’s Japan!)
Comments like this really irk me.
As much as we like to bitch and moan about a bit of TAX or how much we get ripped off, we still have it bloody good here. Could it be better? yeah sure, nowhere is perfect but we have pretty damn good welfare, working conditions, wages, health care, infrastructure etc…
Sure our Internet might be shit but I’d rather not have to worry about being shot at school every day than have google fibre.
My comment was a little sarcastic…
There are other things about our country I dislike too, but you are completely right, there aren’t many, if any, countries that are much better. In saying that, I did say I hope it’s Japan for a reason.
Lucky bugga. I’m still planning my escape, but given how little money I can save at the moment it could be years before I get close to affording my escape
It’s amazing how efficient the government can be when it comes to collecting taxes… I wouldn’t have a problem paying this as long as they address how much we get screwed over by international companies!
Ugh, do they WANT us to pirate games or something?
Joe Hockey can not be serious. He is just trying to scam Australians. Well, I won’t be paying tax on steam. There is bound to be ways around it and I’ll find it.
I can’t believe it. We need to reduce the amount of piracy in Australia. Netflix was a fantastic start but this is going to drive it right back up.
Oh fantastic. We already pay the same amount for digital copies as we do (more or less) for hardcopies. Which is already MORE than we should be paying (comparable to the US), so now they will cost even MORE, making the price disparity even bigger and leading to more piracy.
Because at the moment the prices for digital copies of games and the like are already higher than they should be, after all, I pay to download it. I pay for the bandwidth, and the copy, and still pay prices equal to hard copies in a lot of places.
So already they are more expensive than they should be and often much more expensive than in other regions and now they want to charge even MORE?
Piracy spike incoming.
Well I get most of my Steam keys via Humble Bundle. Enjoy the GST revenue from that Joe!
Would cost more to collect than what we’d actually receive in tax. Moronic Joe, just moronic.
At the end of the day anyone savvy enough to find a free VPN can easily avoid paying GST.
There’s also the option of not bothering to purchase directly from Steam. That’s a two-fold protest becoming a three-fold protest because of the massively overinflated prices Australian’s have to pay and the lack of an Australian currency which is the double blow, the GST on top is extra cream.
Happy for Steam to charge & remit GST, but there are so many holes in this proposal it isn’t funny. You either distort and fragment the market by only pursuing the big players, or the scheme costs more than you recover, which is the reason for the $1000 cap in the first place.
Or you make it all too hard and overseas publishers (starting with the indies) decide the AU market is not worth the effort. Check out the fallout from VAT MOSS, where the EU decided to charge tax based on the buyer’s location.
i think for one this is completely ridiculous, us aussies already have to pay extra to get steam games there for its not fair in any way shape or form
I can see a lot of businesses either:
1 – Locking Australian customers out of their markets (Eg. Amazon)
2 – Keeping their prices the same, but charge 10% more in USD rather than AUD
3 – (The extremely rare case) Telling Hockey to jam it and keep business going as normal.
If you think that sites will change their entire system to display AUD just because of the GST, then there’s a bridge I’d like to sell you. No business is going to be willing to restructure to help out our country, especially the USA, where Hockey has targeted them as “tax evaders”
wait so my copy of Dota will cost me 10% more? how will I feed my kids?
If they were to charge GST on it, wouldn’t Steam need to charge in AUD, and have an Australian operation? That’s my understanding of how GST works, at least :S
Still won’t be shopping at Harvey Norman.
We already pay a ridiculous amount for Video Games. “Brick and Mortar” Stores are so desperate to hang on, despite the fact that they are no longer necessary in this age. Is it unfair? Maybe. Is this 10% tax going to save “B&M” stores? Definitely not.
Physical stores are dying due convenience, not pricing. The 350million in extra revenue for the government is not going to save them from their debt: not even close.
This just reflects the archaic attitude presented in Australia, towards technology.
In fact – get this!
GTAV is $90 at *EB Games*. GTAV on *steam* is $95.
Did the gov actually do any research before they proposed this?
As for Piracy… We’re the land of Pirates right? Yet we’re going to be charged more for digital products (which is of course, where piracy occurs).
Maybe i’ll wake up in the morning, and find out this was all a dream.
Doubt it, this is Australia. The dream died a long time ago.
That’s 10% less I will have to spend in local shops. Meh.
Here the big question, who is going to force steam or netflix or whoever to actually pay up in the first place?
i mean unless they have an actual physical presence in this country we cant just rock up to the UN and tell the 3rd world country where their business is based ( you know for tax reasons) that they have to pay up.
Are we now going to pay the IRS to force valve to give us the 10% it owes us? Does this now mean that we can claim games and streaming on our taxes as well?
And as others have already said, by all means attach the gst to digital goods, but how about you end the price gouging that we as austalian consumers are forced to endure from greedy multi-national corperations first!
Economist here. Logistics of actually collecting the tax aside (whole separate thing), a tax on the sale of digital goods is simply equalising the field. Under an equitable tax system, there should not be a tax advantage for someone buying a good from place A over someone buying from B (digital vs retail respectively in this case). Remember, we’re talking about tax here, differences in the final price due to fixed costs, labour etc is again a different argument. So this is a logical piece of policy.
However, as most have mentioned, things get muddied because with something like Steam, we’re already charged inflated prices due to retailer pressure, an inefficient market to begin with. Such a tax would only remain equitable if it eats into the margins of digital sales, ie prices stay the same. Ideally, the artificial inflation of digital prices would be removed but that’s never going to happen so the best we can do is no change in price. If prices increase, that would technically be taxing the consumer twice. EDIT: In fact, that’d likely serve as grounds for anti-competitive behaviour.
trouble is though theres only a few people in parliment and the non tech media who know this. 95% of the pricks in canberra would be more likely to believe that poor nigerian prince than us
If artificial inflation remains, that’d actually serve as grounds for an anti-competitive behaviour case on part of the retailers/distributor/publisher whomever. In fact, it is not in Valve’s best interests to allow the publishers to maintain their margins as they’d be at a disadvantage and could be the very ones to file a suit.
Exactly. This isn’t the government proposing an increase in Steam prices because they hate gamers and I’m a little disappointed that these articles are sort of baiting that response. It’s about going into that grey area where digital goods and services appear to be slipping through the cracks. I don’t support what they’re proposing here but I can’t really blame them for looking at literally millions of purchases being made within the country without GST.
I mean if I refused to pay my taxes on items sold via online sales nobody would offer me any sympathy when the ATO knocked on my door. At the very least Valve shouldn’t get our support on this simply because they’re already charging too much.
Taxing the consumer twice.. you mean like with petrol? 🙂
Gst on steam is fine. The fact that it’s Joe fxx kn Hockey pisses me off.
Keep gaming gamers!
More taxes on luxury goods wouldn’t hurt so much if I knew that that money wasn’t going to fund anti-climate change studies or inhumane offshore incarceration centers. Now on top of getting triple screwed while buying a game (“Australia tax” + AUD->USD conversion + GST) I also have to carry the guilt of funding terrible stuff with each purchase.
Except the revenue goes to states, not whatever you say it goes to.
It’ll be interesting to see just how exactly how this incompetent Government will try and enforce this ridiculousness
in my honest opinion if they want to stop piracy what they need to do is make prices equal or slightly cheaper then the competition. but what they are doing is going to drive more ppl in to downloading games from torrent sites.
Benefit of steam is steam sales, so provided you content to wait a little bit for specials to crop up then I guess a Tax isn’t going to hurt. However if you buy some of these on week-1 releases then Australians are probably going to be even more prone to just pirating the game.
Driving prices up isn’t a way to combat piracy imo…
Looked at a few items on Steam with and without VPN. A game called RUSE is $49.99 here in Aus where as in US it was 9.99.
EH!??!
So yesterday, I just bought Witcher 3 for $20.70AUD by using a Ukraine VPN to login in to GoG(dot)com and buy it that way. Just like the geo-avoidance for the streaming services that people have been using for years, this geo-avoidance for digital games is nothing new either. How is the government going to charge GST on method of purchase? Answer: They’re not.
So as with all half-baked govt. tax/money grab schemes, they will fall flat on their face before even getting out of the gate.
Does buying it this way region lock it at all?
There is a hyper inflation for us here in Aus when it comes to steam games. If this forces a complete repricing on steam for Australians than I am all for it, providing they do lower prices of games and make them available in our currency at a comparable rate to US prices.
I believe they did this for Canada and some of their games are cheaper than US prices once the dollar is exchanged. Perhaps this could be a great time for us even though we’re thinking not.
If it isn’t… well I currently have about a 5yr backlog of games to play due to how little time I seem to get to play games and I assume most people do thanks to the likes of Humble. ^.^
I think we need to find out who thought of the idea to start humblebundle and praise them instead of GabeN if Steam does end up with hyper inflated games + tax to boot.
Never ceases to amaze me how quickly the government gets things done when there’s more money in it for them.
I will continue to purchase my games via US PSN, therefore avoiding the forever greedy local publishers and retailers, as well as more taxes. Joe can shove it. As always people will just pirate, import or access foreign digital stores. Over and over everyone wonders why oh why Australians are some of the biggest pirates, yet the answer continually falls on deaf ears; WE ARE SICK TO DEATH OF BEING RIPPED OFF!
AU psn: $99.95AUD
US psn: 59.99USD
Canadian psn: 69.99CAD = 1.05AUD to their dollar
Retail: $75 – $99AUD
Import via Asia = $65AUD incl. free shipping
There is no incentive what so ever to buy from sources bound by our inflation, GST etc. None. Australian retailers, publishers and the government can shove it.
It seems to me this tax is somewhat of an ‘agreement’ for overseas providers as only the big companies like netflix and steam will apply it. Why would these companies agree to tax their customers if it means they will lose sales? The argument has been all along that the cost to administer the tax would outweigh the income it generates and these companies could surely make things VERY difficult and costly for the government in its administration if they wanted.
Once this tax hits I for one will abandon steam, origin etc for new releases and simply keep to collecting a physical copy. I will only buy the extremely discounted digital versions on steam from now on (eg The witcher 1 & 2 for $4.50 US type bargains)
Piracy it is!
Not going to bother me, I rarel buy Steam keys from Steam, usually much cheaper at GMG or various bundle websites.
No I will not pay taxes on already expensive computer games thanks to the conversion rate.
pretty bullshit them taxing something that don’t even belong to them or has anything to do with them, i wont be buying from steam anymore, ill just continue to import and buy from other countries, fuk the idiots of the Australian goverment they dont do anything for the country anyway only interested in filling their own pockets with money for doing nothing. lazy cuntss.
Well, interestingly if you look at the way say barter card works, which replaces currency with barter points, they can’t tax it with GST.
It is official. As of July 2017 the GST will apply to ALL online purchases including downloads at a $0 threshold.
July 2017, a date that will live forever in infamy!