That might have been the case when GST was introduced in 1986 at a time ways to avoid the consumption tax were few.
But these days the GST tax net has a gaping hole.
While, there have always been ''cash'' jobs and a black market of sorts, a flood of personal imported goods and services is now bought without GST imposed.
Not only are they bought via the internet, but many of the services, particularly for entertainment, are brought here via the worldwide web.
The Government is now moving to try to patch at least part of the hole.
It proposes applying GST to imported digital services and other ''intangibles''.
There should be little serious opposition to this because it is simply not fair that 15% extra applies to goods and services sourced from New Zealand or via New Zealand suppliers and not from overseas.
A clear, specific example is of Netflix compared with, say, Spark's Lightbox or Sky.
Netflix users do not pay GST while the others' customers do. With every passing year, more and more of what we buy comes through the internet and this obvious anomaly needs to be fixed.
The Government this week released a discussion paper on the options.
It notes an estimated $180million in GST a year is lost because of goods and services coming direct to customers.
The increase is about 10% a year, and about $40million of the total is from services and intangibles.
Even if the Government can recoup much of the $40million - and more in later years as the amount grows - that will help.
When GST began nearly 30 years ago, the flows from overseas were not envisaged.
GST, meanwhile, has grown to reach 18% of Government revenue and needs to be protected.
As well, if imported digital content is not taxed, New Zealand companies could well find it more beneficial to move offshore, taking with them jobs, profits and taxes.
The erosion of the tax base by international companies is serious enough already.
The giants like Google and Facebook are able to juggle their expenses and profits and take advantage of jurisdictions with low tax rates.
That leaves most of the countries where they operate missing out on tax revenue and competing local businesses comparatively worse off.
Much more co-operative pan-global efforts will be required to improve the collection of company tax in this area, and no answers have yet been found.
Fortunately, the issues for electronic services are not as complex, and good progress has been made.
The European Union, Norway, South Africa, Norway and Switzerland can already claim some success and Japan and South Korea are following.
Australia, crucially, is moving and hopes to have the tax in place by July 1, 2017.
There are issues about residency, whether GST should be charged business-to-business or just business to consumers, on exactly how the GST would be collected and whether it would only apply to businesses of a certain size. No doubt, opportunities for avoidance will be plentiful.
But, at the very least, the main digital players can be included and the playing field with local suppliers will not be too tilted.
Unfortunately, lower value imported goods like books or clothes - as distinct from electronic services - are another matter
. The discussion paper recognises the cost of collecting the tax can easily be more than the tax itself.
Customs is supposed to be examining more efficient systems to minimise delays and lower costs and a further discussion paper is due out later this year.
For now, goods worth up to about $400 can be imported GST free, a figure relatively high by most world standards but much lower than Australia's A$1000.
It is important progress can be made so GST can be charged across the board or at least to a lower level.
Quite apart from lost Government tax income, it is ludicrous to give overseas suppliers advantages over the locals.
For the sake of the health of our cities and towns as well as fundamental fairness, our businesses and retailers should not be handicapped.
