Quote:
Originally Posted by monkeyluis
Its probably government regulations more than the companies. Who knows.
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This is pretty much it. Each country has it's own taxes and regulations. An example of this was that for a few weeks when the iPad first came out, Israel was confiscating iPads when people were trying to carry them in country because they had not yet been approved by the Israeli government.
Amazon gets dinged by customers all the time for the same reason. Why can't I buy something on the US web site and pay with a non US credit card? The basic answer is government regulation and legal liability. The reason that Apple has country specific web sites is because sales within that country is governed by that countries laws. I'm sure if Apple had it's way, they would have one website for everyone. It would be a lot more efficient and 9 times out of 10, the order is being shipped from the factory in China. But then, someone might find that it's cheaper to buy in a low tax country and ship the iPad to a high tax country and the high tax country fines Apple big bucks because they aren't getting the taxes that they feel are due them.