Online is where the price is right

There’s a debate (maybe more of a campaign) raging in Australia right now about the impact of online shopping on local retailers. Buying your golf-clubs from Amazon avoids the universal ten per cent sales tax chargeable in this country as long as those clubs come in under a $1,000 price point.

Retailers and their spokespeople have been lining up to persuade TV news audiences of the inevitable catastrophe awaiting our economy unless we tax online imports equally to their stores. And their point would be a fair one if it wasn’t so disingenuous. That’s because the price difference between online and store bought goods in this country goes well beyond a mere ten per cent, and photographers feel this more keenly than most.

As per my earlier rant on the matter, we seem to be paying a heck of a premium to have these kangaroos of ours. A Canon EOS 1D Mark IV is $2,349 cheaper in the US at recommended retail price alone, and a 15 inch MacBook Pro is over five hundred dollars dearer here. Photoshop? Almost double the American price notwithsanding the fact we’re all probably downloading it from the same servers anyway.

Disparity like this is just too great to ignore, not to mention downright suspect. Retailers might just need to adapt to the threat posed by the internet as other industries have had to respond to its impact on them. (Newspapers anyone?)

UPDATE: It turns out that “campaign” was right.