Car dealers want GST on private sales

Press, 20 July 1985, Page 28

Car dealers want GST on private sales

PA Auckland A group of used car dealers has threatened to refuse to pay the goods and services tax unless it is imposed on private car sales as well. If the Government imposed the tax on private sales, the cost of buying a second-hand car privately could increase about $2OO. A New Lynn car dealer and speedway driver, Mr Pat Johnson, said many dealers would be forced out of business if they had to pay GST and people selling their cars privately did not. He said the Auckland branch of the Motor-Vehicle Dealers’ Institute had agreed unanimously to a resolution he moved to “refuse point-blank” to pay GST on used cars unless the

public also had to pay it. “No way will we pay it if the public do not," he' said. “It is becoming harder and harder to deal in cars, because we are being strangled by restrictions. GST is just another restriction,” he said. The Motor-Vehicle Dealers’ Institute had become a dictatorship, Mr Johnson said. “I am forced by law to become a member of this organisation, yet have very little say in it.” A New Lynn dealer, Mr Peter McSkimming, said it was unfair to charge GST on second-hand cars when the average New Zealander changed cars every two years. “A 10-year-old car will collect GST five times,” he

said. “The general feeling of a majority of dealers is that they are’ being penalised because they have to have licences.” The chairman of the Auckland branch of the dealers’ institute, Mr Don Thomson, said the dissidents were only a small group of West Auckland dealers who did not represent the institute. “They are very small dealers,” he said. “They are, in general, straight-out second-hand dealers. “There was a motion put to oppose GST, but that is out of our hands. As the Auckland branch we technically cannot deal with Government departments,” Mr Thomson said.