Recent GST developments in New Zealand

In applying these principles, the guidelines acknowledge that it is not possible to determine where final consumption of services and intangibles occurs without the adoption of ‘proxies’ for consumption – that is, workable rules that make assumptions about the place of consumption. For the most part the guidelines therefore focus on establishing these proxies. A key proxy, and the main focus of this article, is the use of the customer residence test in determining the place of taxation for B2C ‘remote’ (as opposed to ‘on the spot’) supplies.