I need a heap of hard drives, I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars on import tax. Should I expect any issues if I order half a dozen hard drives across as many orders?
Any Issues with Splitting Amazon US Orders to Avoid Import Tax?
O15 on 09/07/2022 - 10:32
Last edited 09/07/2022 - 11:33 by 1 other user
Last edited 09/07/2022 - 11:33 by 1 other user
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So I'll avoid paying the import tax to Amazon but customs will just end up chasing me for it?
Slightly OT… but does amazon still do this sort of thing?
If anything, I'd gotten the impression that amazon's dispatch system had gotten dumber over the years - possibly in favor of just getting stuff out the door as quickly as possible.
I still miss the options that they had many years ago… Amazon once gave you the choice of shipping everything as one shipment, possibly waiting for one or two items to come into stock, or pay extra to ship separately.
Nowadays, if you order three instock items sold by amazon, there's still a good choice they'll fulfill and ship items separately from different warehouses. This means nothing in terms of cost to me, since they no longer pass on the cost of multiple dispatches, but I do feel a bit guilty having two or three Flex drivers carrying one item each.
They do at some level, not sure how it was back in the day but just last week I ordered a couple items from different sellers, at checkout it offered me to ship individually or wait until they could be shipped together, sounded like the third parties would ship to Amazon then they would ship to me, was all free anyway, I chose to let them bundle it into one and it still got here faster then either items expected date somehow
GST will be payable regardless of the total value. Under the FTA with the USA duty will not be payable
If you're shipping to Australia, Amazon will probably already be collecting/charging GST on your purchase.
Remember when Amazon US stopped shipping to Aus for a while? It was due to the the Aus Government (Gerry Harvey) changing the laws and requiring foreign sellers to collect GST on behalf of purchasers (for amounts less than $1,000). From memory Amazon US put in the right systems and back to shipping to Aus.
Yes Amazon US do ship some items to Aus again. Other Amazon sites don't
that man really is despicable
That is the same man that for years refused to add online shopping to their web site as he said it would never catch on!!
Yes, we should definitely encourage overseas businesses rather than treating them the same as local businesses
or maybe we could encourage domestic businesses, rather than ripping off Australians at every opportunity?
Amazon US definitely do charge GST on all purchases so you won't avoid that by purchasing via them.
People here are confused on GST vs import duty.
No, just answering the question OP really means to ask rather than clouding the issue. Amazon US collects GST. I've never, in literally thousands of packages, been charged import duty on a package that's already had GST paid. Similarly even when I've had to pay at the border, I've been charged import duty so few times I could count it on one hand.
As far as OPs question goes, if they order from Amazon US they won't avoid paying tax on it. You can confirm this by adding the item to cart and going through the checkout process without finalising it.
Another trick to avoid amazon combining orders is to use a credit card or prepaid gift card that doesn't work.
They will try and charge it and then send you an email saying your payment has declined. You can do this for about a week and then it auto cancels if you don't go in and choose a different card.
Also useful if you want to hold a price and aren't sure.
Depends how many hundreds you're talking about, is it's more than a grand you can order them to a hotel in Hawaii, fly for a weekend there and bring your hard drives back with you in a luggage, all for a cost of GST that would be collected by Australia. Hawaii state tax is only 4% but the closes place without it is Oregon, so saving 4% might be not worth it.
What about remailers?
All the ones I'm aware of are now collecting GST. There's probably still a few smaller ones around but who knows, I've seen scams run by even the big names.
That's correct, and if you pick forwarder in a wrong state you will pay both sales tax and GST
Crap. Amazon needs a no-doc "package it like Grandma would" option.
Well, hotel or Amazon locker. Hotels these days like to charge you for receiving mail.
If you order them too close together Amazon will consolidate them into the one shipment.
On the flip side if they are on special for a limited time you will miss out.
One solution is to ship some to your work address and some to your home address or some to the different parcel post pickup places. The last one may or may not work.
I think you will get hit with the GST no matter what you try, see https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=…