Quote:
Originally Posted by ProfCrash
If the government is going to charge so much in tax that it gives you an incentive to shop elsewhere, then the government should change the tax code so that you have an incentive to shop at home.
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It's not the tax I object to, it's Amazon's surcharge that makes the majority of books on Amazon so much more expensive for me.
I've compared prices with an Austrian friend who hasn't changed his account to Amazon.de but still shops at Amazon.com; we both have to pay the same EU VAT but as Amazon doesn't add the $2 surcharge to the prices he sees, the average traditionally published book is $3-4 cheaper for him. Granted, in
some cases there's probably also the issue of the publisher setting different prices, but overall, I doubt that most UK/US publishers bother to set wildly different prices for customers in different non-English-speaking EU countries.
And it's
very obvious with self-published books, where the base price is the same - if the book costs $2.99 for an American, it costs around $3.41 for my Austrian friend ($2.99 + 15% EU VAT) and $5.74 for me ($2.99 + $2 Amazon surcharge + 15% EU VAT on top of book price + Amazon surcharge).