The Commerce Commission is receiving a number of complaints against The Dominion Post newspaper for increasing the price in the shield of GST.

The owner of the newspaper, Fairfax New Zealand has been issued warning by the commission for taking help of GST in surging the prices, as the GST impact on rise in prices is just 10c.

GST was increased by 2.5% on October 1, bringing it to 15%. Since then, the commission has received as many as 80 GST-related complaints from consumers. Many of them have complained that the firms have increased the prices by over 2.5% by giving reason of rise in GST.

The commission stated that the newspaper has surged the price of its weekday edition from $1.50 to $1.60 under the cloak of GST, but actually the GST impact raises the price to $1.53.

Fairfax has consented to that they advertised wrongly in the newspaper explaining the price increase due to GST. It also expressed that the rise comprised of GST and the yearly scheduled price increase that had been deferred in June.

Businesses have the right to increase prices anytime as desired by them but the reason that they cite for the price rise must not be deceptive, as viewed by Graham Gill, an Enforcement Manager.