Yes, but still, $79 is about £50, not £89. You need to add 80% tax to the US price of the raw kindle to equal the price here.
It's the same with Apple. Believe me, I check prices all over the world. The max state tax in the US is about 10% (New York, California is 9.5% if I remember right). So the prices here are inflated and involve profiteering. You may remember this was an old battle with Apple, and the EU managed to get deal with them to agree not to charge more than 10% more in real terms in the EU than in the US, perhaps in the early 90s. Somehow, this got forgotten, often through manipulations coming from changes in rates of exchange. The result is that European, and specially Uk prices are far higher than US prices, even allowing for state sales tax. There's no excuse, and we shouldn't be making excuses either for Apple or for Amazon. Ranulph On 29 Sep 2011, at 20:49, Paul Howard wrote: > > > On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 1:27 PM, Tony Crooks <[email protected]> wrote: > Can you believe it? New basic Kindle in US = $79. In the UK = £89 > > That's because ours includes the 20% VAT. The price on the US store will not > include any sales tax (which varies from state to state and county to > county). So depending on where you live in the states you have to add your > local and federal sales tax to that price. This catches a lot of people out > on the Apple store (and other online shops) too making it look like our > prices are much higher. > > > -- > Paul Howard > > web: phoward.com | twitter: @phowardcom > > tel (UK): +44 (0)1293 738158 | mobile (UK): +44 (0)7903 505153 | tel > (US) : +1 251 243 0058 > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Sussex Mac User Group" group. > To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/smug?hl=en-GB. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/smug?hl=en-GB.
