Some clients may experience a spike in sales prior to 1 October.This was the case for many businesses back in 1989 in advance of the GST rate increasing from 10% to 12.5%.
Conversely, demand may subsequently dip past 1 October.
Businesses need to plan how they can maximize their sales between now and October, possibly even by invoicing customers in advance to accelerate the time of supply so that the 12.5% rate applies rather than the 15% rate.
The GST rate change adjustment will ensure goods and services bought or sold on or before 30 September 2010 are charged and claimed at the rate of 12.5%.
You need to make the adjustment if you use the:
payments or the hybrid basis to account for GST
invoice basis and have purchased secondhand goods from a non-GST-registered person for your business.
You'll need to make an adjustment if you have income and expenses from before 1 October 2010 and invoices were issued and GST charged at 12.5%, but you have not received or made any payments.
If you make a sale on or before 30 September 2010 when you use the payments accounting basis
You'll charge your customer 12.5% GST.
If you receive the payment on or after 1 October you'll account for it in a later GST return at 15%. This means you'll pay 2.5% more GST than you receive.
We'll give you a 2.5% credit on your GST rate change adjustment that you'll complete as part of your GST return that includes 30 September 2010.
If you make a purchase on or before 30 September 2010 when you use the payments or hybrid accounting basis
You'll be charged 12.5% GST.
If you make the payment on or after 1 October you'll account for it in a later GST return at 15%. This means you'll have accounted for 2.5% more GST than you've paid.
You'll need to pay us 2.5% on your GST rate change adjustment that you'll complete as part of your GST return that covers 30 September 2010.
The adjustment will allow you to calculate the correct amount of GST so the correct amount is returned.
If you make a purchase of secondhand goods on or before 30 September 2010 using the invoice accounting basis
You'll be charged 12.5% GST.
You'll only need to make the adjustment if you have purchased secondhand goods from a non-GST-registered person for your business.
If you make the payment on or after 1 October you'll account for it in a later GST return at 15%. This means you'll have accounted for 2.5% more GST than you've paid.
You'll need to pay us 2.5% on your GST rate change adjustment that you'll complete as part of your GST return that covers 30 September 2010.
The adjustment will allow you to calculate the correct amount of GST so the correct amount is returned.
When there is a GST rate change (in this case from 12.5% to 15%) the general time of supply rule applies for most transactions. This means that a supply is considered to take place at either:
the time an invoice is issued, or
the time any payment is received by the supplier
depending on which happens first.
GST on imports
GST on imports is affected by the increase in GST.
From 1 October you'll need to make sure you issue invoices and account for GST at 15%.
If you claim input tax deductions, you'll need to ensure the correct amount of GST is shown on the tax invoice used as the basis for your claim.
It's likely that you'll receive some tax invoices for goods and services after 1 October, which will be at the old GST rate of 12.5%. Your accounts payable system will need to be able to account for GST at 12.5% and not 15% on these tax invoices.
If you receive a tax invoice at 12.5% after you've closed off your GST return, you can make a late claim for this expense.
Price increases on existing agreements or contracts to reflect GST rate increase
The GST Act allows a supplier to increase their prices on existing agreements or contracts to compensate for the associated increase in GST (i.e. 2.5%), for example:
How will you deal with the GST rate increase as part of your overall sales and pricing strategy? Will you pass on all of the GST increase, or will you fully or partially absorb the GST?
Yet again, will you take this opportunity to increase your price?
At the end of the day your pricing and therefore sales strategy will depend on the composition of your customers (are they GST registered or are they end users who cannot reclaim GST?), demand for your goods and services, not to mention your competitors’ reactions to the same issues.
You’ll need to update all of your marketing and sales collateral and that includes any web pages.
And here’s one of the big issues for retailers – you’ll need a plan for updating shelf and catalogue prices.
And a word on pricing… Check out the following price reduction and price increase tables... They challenge your thinking on price discounting and price increases don’t they?
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