i've been noticing more websites not including GST in listed prices, which, to my understanding, is illegal unless you're advertising exclusively to other businesses:
Businesses must display the total price of a product or service as a single figure. This price must be the minimum total cost – the lowest amount a customer could pay, including any taxes, duties and unavoidable or pre-selected extra fees.
here are two websites i've seen doing this in the past week alone - red hat and patreon. patreon in particular is in no way aimed at business-to-business transactions.
Price displays
There are laws about how businesses display prices. They cover how prices are displayed, and what must be included in the displayed prices.Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
Lynnesbæn :bune_ylw:
in reply to Lynnesbæn :bune_ylw: • • •Content warning: i am mad about price listings without GST
this is absolute bullshit. it's one thing for Jerry's Crochet Patterns Dot Wordpress Dot Com to display prices without GST because jerry made a genuine mistake and has never dealt with the logistics of international sales before. i'm not mad at jerry for "US defaultism" or whatever.
i AM mad at massive corporations who can't be fucked to add
if (country == "AU) { price = price * 1.1 }to their shitty website. "oh but we're an american company, in america you don't need to include tax" i don't care. you're selling to australians, you're listing prices in australian dollars, you have a fucking ABN, you need to comply with australian price display laws.YOU CANNOT DISPLAY PRICES WITHOUT GST. you cannot have a page that says "this costs $20" and proceed to charge anything but $20. you cannot say "$5, plus GST" or "$8, plus local sales tax".
Lynnesbæn :bune_ylw:
in reply to Lynnesbæn :bune_ylw: • • •i went to america once, and while i enjoyed the trip overall, i hated that every single time i bought something i was actually paying 10% more, or 8% more, or fucking 7.5% more or some shit.
the one time -- the one time -- i remembered this was a thing while shopping over there, i googled the sales tax rate for the state i was in, and used my fucking phone calculator to work it out. i had the payment ready down to the cent, dimes and nickels and pennies and all. i was told that this was a museum gift shop, which was obviously tax exempt, and therefore i had wasted my time. at that point, i just gave up, and accepted that whenever i bought something, my $5.78 of items would actually be $6.24 or whatever.
don't bring that shit to australia.
drum³
in reply to Lynnesbæn :bune_ylw: • • •Lynnesbæn :bune_ylw:
in reply to drum³ • • •@tempo lmao the massive $3.09 and then the tiny "tax excluded" in light grey font under the bright yellow banner
that sucks so much