antoniosk: This still depends on the foreign supplier being willing to register for GST, collect and make payments thereafter. Changing the threshold for imposition of duties and tax sounds like a compromise based on effort vs return - at what point is the cost to collect higher than what you’re collecting ?

I hope it doesn’t lead to an AmazonAustralia style situation where orgs decide they can’t be bothered because NZ isn’t worth enough, forcing people into more YouShop style shipping (which is OK as an experience but I’ve found some us companies won’t ship to freight forwarders either).

There's a threshold of $60K total sales to NZ pa for each company; below that, they don't have to collect. Dunno who does collect the GST in that case. Perhaps the importer has to pay it to IRD or Customs before they get their goods.

I wonder whether IRD considers AliExpress one company for the purposes of this? Technically, they're just holding the money whilst the purchase of goods is from a third party.

And I still think that asking a company in (say) China to collect money for the NZ Govt is fraught. China is very corrupt and wild-west; I foresee lots of under-reporting of GST collection happening, with the company just pocketing the 15% as an additional profit. What is the NZ Govt going to do about it, even if they discover it? De-register (assuming that they were even registered) that company from the GST collection system? Anything else?