ISLANDERS will be charged GST on all goods bought from Amazon from the start of next month.
From 1 July, the ‘de minimis’ threshold at which Islanders pay GST on imported products will drop from £135 to £60.
But larger retailers (those which have an annual turnover of at least £300,000) will be subject to the same rules as the Island’s high-street retailers.
This means that online orders of any value from retailers such as Amazon will be subjected to the 5% sales tax GST, which the chair of Jersey’s Consumer Council, Carl Walker, said was not ‘spelt out’ to himself or Islanders and therefore was an ‘unwanted surprise’ and ‘unexpected increase in the cost of living for Islanders’.
Treasury Minister Ian Gorst said: ‘This is ultimately an issue of fairness and it has been the policy of successive governments since 2007, when GST was introduced, to remove this discrimination when it became administratively practical to do so. That time came when the EU and the UK had implemented similar rules, during 2022.
‘It cannot be right, for example, that a £25 item bought in our high street is taxed, while the same item from a large offshore retailer is supplied tax-free.
‘The government has already taken significant actions to help Islanders with the cost of living and will keep those under review.’
Deputy Gorst added that there had been ‘a good deal of information’ provided to the public in advance of the changes using various media channels, including, he said, in the JEP.
Mr Walker, however, said the fact that GST would be charged on items below the de minimis level from larger retailers ‘could have been better communicated’.
He said: ‘It’s difficult to argue against the principle of introducing GST to online shopping, but I don’t think consumers were aware that this latest reduction would result in certain online retailers charging GST on everything, no matter if it fell below the de minimis.
‘We knew that the government were in negotiations with larger retailers to charge the GST at source rather than at Customs. The Consumer Council was consulted when the government was first considering this, but we do not recall it being spelt out that Amazon and the like will be applying GST to items below the de minimis.’
