Australian retailers need to reconsider store operations and how they do business to better compete with online merchants or else they may fall behind, a new report from the National Retail Association reports.

The $1,000 threshold for importing goods encourages many consumers to simply buy retail products online and import them into the country to avoid paying higher domestic prices. Smaller merchants say this practice hurts their business because it means Australian consumers are buying from foreign companies rather than domestic ones.

Gary Black, executive director of the NRA, asserts that other countries have lower thresholds that discourage this behavior. However, the government argues that lowering the threshold would result in the tax costing more to collect than it would earn. Black counters that argument by also noting the negative impact importing has on retail jobs.

"When you factor that into the numbers there's an overpowering case for the removal of the threshold," he told the Daily Telegraph.

Other countries have a much lower threshold to promote local retail. In the UK, for example, the threshold is at 15 GBP.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Friday, March 16th, 2012 at 10:10 am .