re: importing to .ch (was Re: smartcards in .ch?)
On 21/06/13 12:58, Philipp Hug wrote:
> Daniel,
>
> The swiss parliament decided against raising the limit from CHF 5 to
> CHF 10:
> See:
> http://www.parlament.ch/D/Suche/Seiten/geschaefte.aspx?gesch_id=20094209#
>
> It was rejected because it would discriminate Swiss retailers against
> foreign retailers because the Swiss retailers would still need to pay
> VAT on their products.
>
Unfortunately that is a shallow argument created by spinsters and not
one based on the real world - any business owner who runs their business
on the basis of such concepts is going to get a rude shock one day
A perfect example is books: apart from a couple of subsidized bookstores
in universities, Australia doesn't have any bookstores now. There is no
tax on books in Australia. Even if the Government put a 200% tax on
books, it wouldn't have saved our bookstores - it is not just Amazon
that is killing them, it is the rise of ebooks or the amount of leisure
time that people now spend on facebook (or exploring the 20,000 packages
in Debian).
The bottom line is that the world changes and these taxes are not the
deciding factor when these dramatic changes take place.
I have no doubt that a small number of Swiss retailers would suffer if
the threshold for import taxes was raised to CHF 1,000 - some would
close down, their shops would be vacant, rents would fall. When the sun
rises again the next day, the next business in that space would be
paying less rent. They would be more competitive or selling some other
type of value-added product or service. Customers would have more
choices and happier lives. It is Darwin's theory of evolution. As
people who work with technology, we all potentially have more to gain
from the evolution of businesses in this way.
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