The Fair Imports Alliance has raised concerns that the Customs and Border Protection Service’s compliance campaign to crackdown on businesses and individuals rorting the importation regulations is lacking industry consultation regarding process, focus and timelines.
Fair Imports Alliance joint spokesperson Brad Kitschke said while the coalition has supported the custom compliance campaign, the Customs and Border Protection Service has failed to include them in the process.
“The Alliance believes that information gathered from industry consultation must form part of the campaign. In addition, any forum that is held should occur in partnership with industry and due courtesy should be shown in terms of who is invited and the notice period,” he said.
“Being contacted about a forum by Customs and Border Protection with less than one week’s notice is not acceptable.”
The Alliance has raised issues that numerous parcels are being imported under the threshold to later be sold in temporary pop up shops; that there are false invoicing to avoid paying GST; and there is a lack of data about the size and scope of packages being imported.
The Fair Imports Alliance is the key group that lobbied the Government for reform and last year, through the Australian Sporting Goods Association, provided Minister Brendan O’Connor’s office with a substantial paper about some of its concerns around enforcement of the GST threshold. To date, the department has chosen not to acknowledge this report or respond to it,” Kitschke said.