Quote:
Originally Posted by Pardoz
Everything I've seen from online retailers is that the pressure to define location of sale for ebooks differently from location of sale for pbooks is coming from domestic, not foreign, publishers, and that they're using the threat of cutting off sellers who don't play by their rules to ram this through.
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Cheaper prices on pbooks are not really a concern for the two parties mentioned. Let us say you buy a pbook at Amazon and have it sent to Europe. First you would pay a lot on shipping, most probably more than making up for any price difference that might exist if the book was available in your country. Second the book could be taxed at the border, if it has exceeded a certain value. Which would leave you buying only those pbooks in the US that really are not available in your country. And there is no reason for anybody to object to that.
It is easy to trivialize the tax issue. But let us say 100,000 EU citizens spent 100 dollars each on US websites to buy ebooks. And then take 19% tax that is lost. The point is not that European countries want you to declare the books you bought on US websites. The point is that your governments want you to buy on European websites where the tax is automatically deducted! Or that there will be some future arrangement where Europeans could buy on US websites, but the websites would be responsible for forwarding the 19% to your tax office. Meaning you pay more, just like I pay less in Germany -- because I am no resident and don't need to pay VAT.