By Zaya Williams
The Sales Tax Amendment Bill has been passed in the Upper House with a major change set to come into effect from April.
The key amendment outlined in the bill is the change to Section 39 of the Principal Act, which mandates that a taxable person must lodge an ABST return for each tax period no later than 15 calendar days after the end of the period.
This amendment reduces the lodging period from 30 days to 15 days, significantly expediting the collection process.
After just having to move swiftly adjust their pricing structures in response to the recent tax changes, incurring additional manpower and administrative costs, businesses are lamenting lack of consultation.
Senate Minority Leader Shawn Nicholas championed those concerns in the senate saying that she believes that not only should have consultations been held but there are other means to improve compliance.
“Do not penalize those who are complying. Try and see how you can get more people into the net and having them in the net, what can we do to make sure that the way in which we do business we are able to meet the expenses… incentivize those who pay,” she said.
Government senators completely disagreed with her suggestion.
Senator Philip Shoul said “it cannot be right” to give businesses an incentive for paying what does not belong to them in the first place.
Once you’re using an accounting system removing the tax levy from 15% to 17% only take a few seconds, and hit apply to all tax items. Some accounting systems, especially the older version of accounting software, do calls for manually applying the 17% tax individually to each tax item which requires a lot of time consuming. Then another time consuming is changing the prices on items on the shore shelves. It is time we get with modern times. A lot of us travel overseas and the items on shelves and in stores do not have the tax until you cash out at the cashier.