Yes, the table suggests that Perth Mint retail pricing is outside the price for premiums deemed acceptable for the "investment form" requirement of Investment Precious Metals for GST purposes, by certain officers of the ATO. Actually, even Perth Mint premium or partners distributors who receive best possible pricing will still be paying premiums above those in this table.
The premium limits come directly from ATO correspondence justifying a debt and consequent adjustment to client integrated account - however they apparently are not taxation law - I can find no reference to these in GST Act or ITAA, and reliably believe that these are simply the conclusions arrived at by an ATO officer(s) as an appropriate response to an objection to an audit, that was originally four times larger (financially speaking). The original audit found that ONLY "plain" cast bars could correctly be sold without GST (investment precious metals) and explicitly stated that ALL coins were subject to GST giving over 30 points to support the argument, although many of these points are clearly made without relevant industry/topic knowledge and seemingly containing search engines results instead. All of these arguments / points were rebutted - in an objection that was formally "partially granted", all penalties for recklessness and GIC were removed and none of the rebuttals that formed the objection were challenged. The response did present the above table in reply along with the methodology used to arrive at these figures which was used to maintain the assertion that a considerable percentage of sales were incorrectly classified, and that the original audit had identified misclassifications that were not subsequently identified by the reviewing auditor.
This directly clashes with the private rulings that I believe Perth Mint received from the ATO for it's bullion coin programme - (and renewed shortly after industry participants were being audited and advised them of potential discrepancies) unless of course the matter of pricing was in fact relevant, but not considered for these rulings. The Perth Mint are not requesting payment of GST on bullion coin sales (also for sales of certain minted bars priced outside the table limits) nor do they offer any material advice on countering effects an adverse position report brings, even to a related entity without any such adverse findings itself. This can include the loss of a distributor account with a manufacturer whose products make up the majority of a business' turnover, and other similar niceities. PM have advised they definitely do have private rulings confirming that their bullion coins are GST free or input taxed when on sold, and advise the use of the public ruling GSTR 2003/10, which is handy advice nonetheless.
There are numerous public rulings on ATO website advising applicants they do not need to charge GST on certain bullion coins, however as an informed observation I will add that pricing of these products is invariably and necessarily by virtue of production cost, similar to Perth Mint's and above the thresholds in the table above. This is also the status quo from pre GST days when the products were sales tax-free (and so were numismatic gold, silver and platinum coins as a side note)
An amendment to the GST act defining "investment form" is sorely needed.
I do not think it likely that the Perth Mint will be wound up similarly any time soon, and have had discussions with relevant ATO personnel implying that certain concessions may be made to assist the company if it contacts the ATO in regard to this matter, and urging them to do so. I believe four entities have been wound up or have ceased trading due to this approach - given that this is not a trivial proportion of the total bullion dealers in Australia, I wonder if it would be a class action if all four united to litigate?
