Quote:
Originally Posted by Yapyap
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).
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Just FYI, from what I have read, that charge goes directly to the wireless company in the country of origin (not the US.) There was a big discussion about it being so high in Canada and why it took so long for there to be books available wirelessly in Canada. The end take was that Amazon was negotiating the fees with the wireless company. Some of those fees to some countries have come down since the initial contracts, but in other countries it is still there.
FWIW. I think during the Canada furor, Amazon actually put out an official message, but I never saw any for other countries. Amazon has always said on the US page that they don't charge for the download.
HOWEVER I do know for a fact that the AUTHOR covers that wireless charge in the US when the book is priced between $2.99 and 9.99. It's in my contract. I get my commission minus a download fee (which is quite small and for each book depends on the actual size of the file.) For books under $2.99, Amazon takes a larger cut of the profit, but covers the wireless fee.