Australian Apple Pricing

[cosmichobo]

G'day,

Netflix in Australia has just put up their pricing, citing a "new tax" as the reason.

The new tax, it would appear, is the loopholes that the Australian government has closed, stopping entitles such as Apple, Google, and evidently Netflix etc from avoiding paying local company taxes on revenues raised within this country.

Question this raises - will Apple and others now follow suit? Will anyone buy Apple products with another 10+% added on?

cheers

cosmic

 

[maflynn]

Question this raises - will Apple and others now follow suit? Will anyone buy Apple products with another 10+% added on?

If they were taking advantage of that loophole that is now closed, probably.

 

[Carnegie]

G'day,

Netflix in Australia has just put up their pricing, citing a "new tax" as the reason.

The new tax, it would appear, is the loopholes that the Australian government has closed, stopping entitles such as Apple, Google, and evidently Netflix etc from avoiding paying local company taxes on revenues raised within this country.

Question this raises - will Apple and others now follow suit? Will anyone buy Apple products with another 10+% added on?

cheers

cosmic

I suspect you're referring to the Diverted Profits Tax which recently went into effect in Australia. That's not the new tax that Netflix is referring to.

Australia extended the applicability of its (10%) Goods and Services Tax to digital goods and services imported by consumers. That change also recently went into effect. That's the tax that Netflix is referring to.

Some others likely will follow suit and raise prices on digital goods and services in response. I'm not sure Apple will; I've read that it was already applying the tax to iTunes purchases.

A last note: If we were talking about an income tax increase, in most cases that wouldn't result in raised prices. Many of the taxes which businesses pay function as pass-through taxes - they (fairly directly) raise the price of goods or services. Because of the way income taxes work, however, they typically don't.

 

[cosmichobo]

Ohhhh right - when the Government went around the world, telling foreign companies how to run their business.... That's right... I thought it was just an April's Fools or something...

Well, ok, thread on hold then.