Why am I now paying tax on Asset Store purchases?

I live in New Zealand, I recently purchased some assets and noticed I'm now being charged tax.

Why would this be? I'm not EU and I should only be paying GST to New Zealand based businesses.

Can someone shed some light?

Thanks

 

Because NZ government mandated that they do, it seems.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12042753

 

Ah right I heard about this, didn't know it had come into effect already, and I thought it was only for 'consumer' goods shipped to NZ.

 

My understanding is it was primarily for electronic and digital goods. Physical goods can be controlled and taxed at the border. Digital goods are much harder to manage.

 

Same in Australia. Our Ministry of Love tax office now gets overseas businesses to collect tax for them. I'm puzzled how they got OS businesses to comply. Amazon, ShapeWays and eBay to name just a few. Not sure about the small vendor or electronic goods though. I think it has reduced overseas eBay sales considerably here in Australia because eBay is now constantly offering 5% and 10% discount codes.

 

Threaten to kick them out of Australia if they don't comply. While Australia is a small market, its still a significant one.

Plus they already had to implement the tax infrastructure to comply to meet EU legislation. So complying for extra countries is just setting a new tax rate for each country. If you are going to already do currency conversions, then you already need to do localisation.