Tax on online purchases looms

Unintended consequences of new online regime may reduce competition. iTunes purchases of local artists such as Delaney Davidson and Marlon Williams (pictured) look set to be hit with GST.

It's New Zealand's turn to try to tax global giants somehow, as the government is scratching its collective head over what to do with the increasing number of products and services being bought over the internet from overseas companies.

You know, that phenomenon that started in the 90s and which has accelerated as network connections have become ubiquitous and fast, meaning it's not only convenient to buy stuff that way, it's quick and cheaper than any bricks and mortar shop could compete with.

Didn't see that coming, eh?

Asking Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Microsoft and others to collect sales taxes from local buyers is fair enough, and it's not going to be hard for them. Similar moves are afoot overseas, even in the United States, which has been hacking away at the issue for the past two years.

It's no coincidence that New Zealand is now following the US and Australia in trying keep the official coffers topped up with tax revenue from online purchases; OECD countries have been debating how to tax the internet for the last few years.

The question is, what unintended consequences will there be tightening the GST regime?

Large companies that enjoy huge economies of scale and can deploy technology to automatically and quickly gather GST aren't likely to bat an eyelid. Smaller companies though that exceed a certain threshold might put the whole tax collection thing in the too complex, too costly bin and stay out of NZ altogether which would have the effect of reducing competition and customer choice here.

The large fines proposed for people who avoid GST on online buys - up to $25,000, or $50,000 for repeat offences - will need some form of information-gathering mechanism on purchasers to work as deterrent.

Basically, if you buy stuff overseas and fib about where you live to save 15 per cent on paid downloads through a Virtual Private Network for instance, it could cost you. How will this be enforced though? Watch this one carefully.

The IRD discussion document also mentions businesses being inadvertently charged GST; the answer to that is "tough, ask the supplier for a refund" because overseas suppliers won't have to issue full tax invoices making it possible to see if GST has been charged and returned.

When it comes to physical goods, much is being made of the $400 threshold being one of the highest in the world. Well, across the Tasman it's A$1,000 and they're wondering how to drop it to $20 without making a massive loss while collecting GST on imported goods - because the current system of tax collection at the border is slow and costly.

Imagine then that there's no GST-free threshold and that the collection system is streamlined to make it quick and easy to collect the tax. That would remove the natural reluctance to buy stuff over $400 because of the huge bureaucratic hassle of dealing with GST at Customs, and make it more attractive to buy high-value goods overseas as they're substantially cheaper there in many cases, surely?

Wonder no more why weary government officials would love to flick the switch on the internet and turn it off completely. Technology changes everything.

The bearable lightness of the MacBook

I swapped my MacBook Pro workhorse that I did most of my writing - and picture and some video editing - on, for a MacBook because it's lighter and I wanted to carry a laptop with me more often.

Now, the MacBook lightness comes with a caveat: it's not the fastest machine in the world, especially compared to MacBook Pros.

After some months of use though, I can honestly say the MacBook performance is is more than enough for the vast majority of work I do, including light image and video prepping. The quick SSD storage helps, and the Retina screen is fantastic.

Battery life is much better since I cut down on Google Chrome web browser usage in favour of Safari - again, there are a few extensions that I'd like on the latter, but overall, I don't miss the former. Here's the skinny from BatteryBox on why you should use Safari instead of Chrome, or lose an average of one hour of battery life.

A couple of things would make the MacBook heaps better though. First, please Apple: make the keyboard on the MacBook as quiet to type on as your other laptops. I realise that the slim MacBook case means there's much reduced room for key travel, but currently, the keyboard is that much too loud to type with.

Second, having to use dongles for the USB-C port to connect memory card readers and your smartphone for charging and other things is not very elegant. Apple is right to think that most things will be done wirelessly soon, but that's unfortunately not the case yet.

I can live with dongles for now, but the USB-C to USB/HDMI has a major (in my view) flaw that ought to be fixed.

This works for charging devices:

This doesn't:

You need to have the dongle plugged into the USB-C port for the USB connector to provide charging voltage/current, even though it's connected to the wallwart charger which is not how these things usually work. You can guess how I discovered that particular flaw.