US Mail Forwarders in Australia & Low Value GST (PriceUSA Officially Closed from 1 June 2018 & ShopMate Still Active)

Just learnt that PriceUSA, has officially closed:

It is with great sadness that after 11 years Price USA will now closed for business as of June 1 2018. My US partners and I will continue to ship orders already placed but we will not take any new orders.

The change to the way GST is applied to goods shipped from overseas makes Price USA unviable. From July 1 companies like mine based in Australia must pay GST on all for goods shipped. Unfortunately, we cannot compete with overseas businesses that will choose to ignore the GST. Australia has no way of forcing overseas companies based overseas to pay Australian GST.


AusPost ShopMate service will remain active from the GST change, but will now issue an administrative fee if you fail to supply the retailer invoice or make inaccurate declarations

Items valued at $1,000 AUD or less:

The Australian Government has passed laws which extend the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to low value imports of physical goods. From 1 July 2018, Australia Post will be required to collect GST from customers and pay that GST to the Australian Tax Office, on items valued at $1,000 AUD or less, that customers ship into Australia using ShopMate.

From 1 July 2018, each time you check out a ShopMate parcel and declare the value of the goods, you will be asked to provide payment for your ShopMate shipping and the applicable GST all in the same transaction^.
The rate of GST is 10%.

^An additional administrative and processing charge of $AUD 55.00 will be imposed if your USA retailer invoice isn’t submitted, and/or if the declared value is not accurate. For more information click here

Comments

  • +1

    Wiki List of Mail Forwarders. Looks like we'll have to update that in a couple of weeks.

  • Is Shopmate actively trying to kill it's own business? With the $55 admin fee if you don't do the paperwork there has to be cheaper options available.

    • There has always been cheaper options to Shopmate.. and given the 2 times i made the mistake of using them they were a nightmare to deal with.

      1) AusPost is the reseller but SingPost owns the company, and everything you follow up have to go through them
      2) The Australa Post staff have no idea how to deal with issues
      3) they charge for "repacking" even when there is absolutely no need to repack items (they even ignore their own conditions as to when an item will be repacked)

      Avoid ShopMate at all costs.

      I am lucky my bro and dad live in England.
      Will be getting items shipped to them and they will gift wrap and forward to me as "gifts" which are excluded from the GST changes :)

      • +1

        Do you think they could do this for me too?

      • +2

        Huh, apparently I'm you're long-lost brother!

        How's it going bro!

        For my birthday can you get Dad to…

  • I'm curious on what's the issue of item shipped by prcel forwarder as usual and we pay the GST when the item in custom? Dhl is main carrier and I guess we pay Dhl?Anything im not aware of?

    • Items over the value of AUD $1000 is still using the same process. The difference is with regards to items below AUD $1000, in which the retailer needs to collect the GST.

      • Ok. But what happen if shipment below $1k gets here with unpaid GST?

        • Duty will be on the vendor I believe, from what I can gather.

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