In a letter to the JEP, Gerald Voisin, owner of Voisins department store, has backed calls for the Island’s five per cent sales tax to be applied to all goods imported to the Island, which Treasury Minister Susie Pinel recently said she was considering.
Mr Voisin said that, as it stood, online shoppers were avoiding the tax, while Islanders who were not ‘internet savvy’ or lacked access to the internet, such as the elderly and less well-off, were forced to pay the tax and effectively subsidise everyone else.
Currently a ‘de minimis limit’ is applied on goods imported to the Island, meaning that any products bought online that are worth £240 or less are exempt from GST.
Mr Voisin said that the motivations for calls to remove the de minimis limit had been ‘misunderstood’ during recent public debate, in which it was claimed local retailers stood to benefit from the move at the expense of consumers.
‘A reduction or removal of the de minimis level will have little bearing on the fortunes of retail. As others have pointed out, people here enjoy the convenience and breadth of choice available via the internet, all from the comfort of their own home,’ Mr Voisin writes in his letter.
‘This is not going to stop, even if goods purchased online cost five per cent more. This whole issue is misunderstood. It is not about saving or helping retail, it is about the States protecting their taxation income from GST and upholding their own strategic aim of maintaining a fair and equitable tax system.’
He adds: ‘The other issue that is ignored is that those people who prefer to buy their goods from local retailers are subsidising those who choose to buy online through the GST that they pay. This subsidy is particularly unfair when one considers that it is often the less well-off or elderly who don’t have access to a home computer or credit cards and are not technically savvy to understand the internet or master PayPal to make payments.’
During a recent States sitting, Deputy Pinel said that she expects GST will eventually be applied to all goods imported to the Island as international deals will be signed placing the onus of collecting sales taxes on suppliers, rather than border control agencies.
