Many small businesses making last minute adjustments for the introduction of the Goods and Service Tax turned to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission website for help in calculating costs and prices.
ACCC Chairman, Professor Allan Fels, said the ACCC website worked overtime in the final hours before the introduction of the New Tax System and GST as businesses down loaded information sheets and software to help with re-pricing.
"Between 9 a.m. and midnight on 30 June 2000, Australian businesses down loaded more than 16,000 copies of the ACCC’s Retail Price Adjustor and Cost Savings Estimator.
"It is pleasing to see many businesses taking advantage of the information available to explain price and cost adjustments.
"The last minute rush by business took the numbers down loading the Pricing Kit to more than 100,000 for the month of June. The Pricing Kit includes software for the Retail Price Adjustor and Cost Savings Estimator.
"Businesses are using the complete package of materials provided by the ACCC with a further 106,000 publications down loaded during the same period, and a total of three million publications distributed since January.
"The overall demand for GST material from the ACCC web site in the month of June has been 1,528,141 'hits', 287,141 'page views' and 44,084 unique-user sessions lasting more than 15 minutes.
"A large number of the calls to the ACCC Price Line were also typically from small business asking last minute questions:
- how to re-price stock;
- what happens if they don’t adjust their prices immediately;
- whether they have to quote prices as GST-inclusive;
- how the GST affects lay-by payments; and
- what items attract GST.
"An ACCC survey of businesses on 1 July 2000 showed that most large business are well prepared for the GST, having changed their prices and displays overnight.
"While some small businesses were less well-prepared, leaving the task until the very last minute, it is pleasing to note that at least half had signs up in their stores explaining what was happening with prices.
"It is also pleasing to see that many businesses had material available to explain price changes to customers.
"Staff seem generally well informed and staff have been trained to give explanations of price changes to customers. Dual ticketing appears to be most common in book stores.
"The ACCC will be closely monitoring the situation as the working week gets under way to further assess the impact of the price changes".