Mr Hockey said: ‘The [relevant] integrity measures were in relation to what is emerging as an OECD consensus, that GST should be charged at the source [of the payment for the service], so a company providing intangible services into Australia, such as media services or so on, wherever they are located they should charge GST on those services [and pay the GST to Australia]. So there are some obvious ones [suppliers] of more recent times engaged in that, and without naming companies, I think you can work them out. And there are a number of those companies that are prepared to charge the GST on the services that they are putting into Australia, but they want to know that they are not at a competitive disadvantage. Now, the States agreed in principle that we should move in that regard. I have offered to work as quickly as possible with them to introduce legislation to address that in relation to intangibles.

If you were to apply it [Australian GST] to goods under id=”mce_marker”,000 for low-value thresholds, that would probably be the appropriate system to follow as well, because there are now fewer providers of goods into Australia than there might have been two or three years ago. Therefore, you can identify those major providers of goods and therefore ask them to charge GST as well, so that there is competitive neutrality. I see those things as integrity measures for the tax base, not a broadening of the GST or an increase of the GST.’

[Transcript of Treasurer’s interview – 9/4/15]

The Treasurer has announced that he will introduce legislation to apply GST to intangible supplies, such as media services, provided by companies (wherever they are located) into Australia. He said such “integrity measures” were in relation to what is emerging as an OECD consensus ie that GST should be charged at the source [ie. where the payment is made], so a company providing intangible services into Australia, such as media services etc, wherever they are located, should charge GST on those services [and pay GST to Australia]. He said the States had agreed in principle that the Government should move in that regard and he has “offered to work as quickly as possible with them to introduce legislation to address that in relation to intangibles”.

Mr Hockey also said that “if you were to apply it to goods under id=”mce_marker”,000 for low-value thresholds, that would probably be the appropriate system to follow as well”.

[LTN 67, 10/4/15]