iPad UK Pricing Confirmed; Apple UK Tax Applied

The iPad will be available in the UK and eight other countries from 28 May 2010; both models will be available for pre-order on 10 May. Reader marcopolo007uk adds a note from iPad-Review.co.uk with pricing: "WiFi Models: 16GB / 32GB / 64GB — £429 / £499 / £599. 3G versions: 16GB / 32GB / 64GB — £529 / £599 / £699. These are a little higher than some had guessed... The Apple Tax stings the UK consumer again." At the current exchange rate, these prices are right around 150% of those offered in the US.

Comments

The OP forgot VAT.

[Dzimas]

Someone can't do math. The numbers are actually really close. Let's look at the base 16GB model. It's £429 in the UK, which equals about $630 according to xe.com. Take off the 17.5% VAT, and we get £353.93. That equals $520 US. What's the problem again???

Re:The OP forgot VAT.

[tk77]

What's the problem again?

VAT

And how is this Apple's problem?

Re:The OP forgot VAT.

[dougmwne]

At least in the UK you're getting a better return for your tax pounds. You spend a smaller percentage of your GDP on military and you get nationalized healthcare.

Re:The OP forgot VAT.

[MoonBuggy]

By replying to your post with a technical correction, I don't doubt that I'm setting myself up to make some obvious mistake, but anyway: the UK prices already include VAT, so by simply subtracting 17.5% of that total you're over counting the tax (as it's 17.5% of the base, untaxed price).

£429/1.175=£365.11, which is approximately $537.80. The mark up from the US prices seems to be around 8%. It's not terrible, I guess, and it's certainly not as bad as it used to be, but 8% on an already expensive product is still a reasonable chunk of change.

Re:The OP forgot VAT.

[MoonBuggy]

Also, since the summary presents the UK price as a percentage of the US one, here are the actual figures:

Wifi
16GB 32GB 64GB
108% 104% 107%

3G
16GB 32GB 64GB
105% 103% 106%

Re:The OP forgot VAT.

[Neoprofin]

And free houses for all the Chavs. I'll take my nano-tech, space laser, military-industrial complex.

Re:The OP forgot VAT.

[Space cowboy]

I disagree with you. This is a quote from a post I made late last year:

I've recently had very bad news in my family - in the space of two weeks, my uncle has been told he needs heart surgery, and my mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer. My uncle has been scheduled for surgery on 15th of this month, and my mother has put off her appointment (originally on the 11th) because I'm getting married on the 12th. She'll be going under the knife on 19th instead. My uncle will be missing the wedding, but we're going to stream it live so he can watch it in the UK, even if it is at midnight over there :)

I thank my lucky stars we're from the UK, because there's just no way our family could afford their treatment over here in the USA - my uncle's heart surgery would cost circa $175,000, my mother's cancer treatment and subsequent costs could come to circa $100,000. We've never had money - I was the first kid in our family to go to college for example, and I had to pay my way through that. We've always scraped-by and made-do, mother and father working, grandmother looking after the kids etc. Over here, I'm lucky in that I have an excellent medical insurance plan from my company, but my fiancee didn't have medical insurance until we met. She used to try not to visit a doctor, to self-medicate via a drugstore if something was wrong. I was horrified that someone would even consider that. Seriously and truthfully - I was aghast that a visit to the doctors wasn't just "what you'd do if you're not feeling well". It's just a no-brainer from my (and anyone from the UK, I suspect) perspective.

For her part, my mother gets personal visits in her home from the MacMillan nurse (cancer specialist nurses, there to answer any questions, give advice, as well as do the nursing stuff), and she has one of the best surgical teams in the country ready to operate when she gets back to the UK. All of this is standard-stuff, she pays her dues (in her taxes / national insurance contributions), and she has the peace-of-mind that comes from knowing she has access to excellent health-care whenever she wants it, without being suddenly landed with huge bills, and without any worry of 'recission' by a financially-orientated insurance company.

There's a lot I like (even prefer) about the USA, but the healthcare system is (from an outsiders perspective) a badge of shame. Everyone gets sick eventually, and everyone dies eventually. Any civilised country ought to recognise and cope with that such that people don't fall through the cracks. The NHS in the UK isn't perfect - you'll frequently hear Brits complaining about it - but it's head, shoulders, and torso above the system over here. I still pay my 'national insurance' in the UK, even though I live in the US - the cost is minimal (about £15/month), and I don't mind helping fund something today that I (or, say, a member of my family) might make use of tomorrow. To me, it's beyond belief that people in the USA fight *against* a similar system, but hey, each to their own. I don't get to vote over here so it's not as though I can do anything about it...

Bottom line: In the UK, health follows an almost burger-king like mantra - "you need it? You got it!" whereas in the USA, you're trusting your health and possibly your life to the same sort of company that screws you over if someone hits your car - an insurance company that has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. After the last few weeks, I'm pretty darn certain which of the two models I prefer.

From our perspective, the good news is that my mother pulled through, both her and my uncle are on medicines for the rest of her life (free, of course) and my mother has just finished the chemotherapy, so she's feeling a little fragile atm, but she made it; anything else is irrelevant.

Simon.

Re:The OP forgot VAT.

[shilly]

1) There's plenty of people who would struggle to get $5k together
2) He also paid insurance premiums, and the premiums may go up and the exclusions may become more significant because of his history now
3) In the UK, he'd have paid £0 at point of need, not $2.5k or 5k
4) How do you know for sure that Duke provides better treatment? What do you mean: better outcomes? better experience? safer? all three? Where's the evidence for your assertion?

£429? ... Ouch

[Manip]

Just to put the cheapest one into context:
  * iPod Touch - £189
  * Dell Laptop (Outlet) - £300
  * Acer / Dell Laptops (Retail) - £400-450
  * ePC "Netbook" - £200
  * Dell "Netbook" - £139
  * Sony "Netbook" - £399

So you could get two iPod Touches, or a Dell Laptop AND Dell Netbook, Sony Netbook, or two ePC Netbooks for this money?

Re:£429? ... Ouch

[Flipao]

Yes but this is an unbelievable, magical, amazing, revolutionary, gorgeous device. Surely that's gotta be worth something.

Re:£429? ... Ouch

[dintech]

Steve Jobs is writing a new story. "The Emperors New Computing Device"

EU/UK vs. American Pricing

[tlhIngan]

Let me guess - in Europe, you'd pay exactly those prices listed? No sales tax added on?

So you'd pay £429 / £499 / £599 / £529 / £599 / £699 for an iPad and not a penny more in sales/VAT?

That's one thing we have in North America - the prices listed ($499/$599/$699/$629/$729/$829) are sans sales tax. So add anywhere from 0% (a few states), to 5-10% to the actual price that Americans pay. Or in Canada, anywhere from 5-15% in sales taxes.

In the UK, the prices tend to be all inclusive - you pay what you see, so all the hidden consumption taxes get built in. VAT of nearly 20%, plus other import taxes and duties and the like. I'm guessing the price gap is a lot smaller than you think.

It's just that governments have used built-in taxes to hide how much taxes are really on products. Happens on this side of the pond with stuff like gas when you actually break down the price.

For example, the 16GB WiFi iPad - £429 is around $630 US. $500 US for the same iPad, plus taxes will probably mean one pays $530-$550 in the US. If we assume the total tax load is (VAT+importation taxes plus duties) 20% for the UK, that $500 iPad becomes $600 instantly.

Re:EU/UK vs. American Pricing

[Tim C]

Let me guess - in Europe, you'd pay exactly those prices listed? No sales tax added on?

I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but here in the UK you are correct - we pay the list price. Sometimes the price is listed as "ex VAT", so you have to factor in an extra 17.5% on top, but that's almost exclusively done by merchants that are targeting business customers. (And generally the price inclusive of VAT is listed alongside anyway)

Re:Maybe if you were a little more efficient

[evilbessie]

At least we didn't change ours because the person who wrote the dictionary didn't like the spellings.

I'm quite sure

[spleen_blender]

Apple is glad to see such free advertising! This is consumerism crap, not slashdot-worthy "stuff that matters" content...

But your U.S. prices do not include tax

[SuperKendall]

£429/1.175=£365.11, which is approximately $537.80. The mark up from the US prices seems to be around 8%.

Unless you factor in that you have to pay sales tax in most places in the U.S - which coincidentally for my area is 8%, so basically the exact same price in the end.

Re:But your U.S. prices do not include tax

[godawful]

Quite right, my 16GB non 3g after taxes was $550 here in California.

Re:But your U.S. prices do not include tax

[MoonBuggy]

Wait, no, I retract my previous reply to you! It's not a fair point!

I got myself a little confused, but you're comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended!).

My initial comparison was untaxed price to untaxed price, and the mark up is between 3% and 8% there. You're then talking about adding US sales tax and comparing that taxed price to the untaxed UK price.

Re:But your U.S. prices do not include tax

[gyrogeerloose]

You're not mistaken that avoiding it is pretty trivial, but it's also probably tax fraud.

That's yet to be determined. The states say it is, the vendors say it's not; right now, the vendors are winning but you can expect to see it in the courts eventually. I think that Amazon.com and the State of California are going to go at it before long.

Re:Pleased I didn't wait

[Lumpy]

why dont you run AndroidX86 on it?

http://www.android-x86.org/

Can I mod an article down as "flamebait"?

[gnasher719]

It's not 150%, it's 126%. And the UK price includes 17.5% VAT which Apple would have to send straight to Gordon Brown's tax collectors if he hadn't just been thrown out (I think he is refusing to leave, but thank heavens he will), whereas the US price doesn't include US sales tax.

Simple math is obviously beyond you...

[Space cowboy]

UK VAT (the equivalent of sales tax in the USA) is 17.5%

Removing the tax so we can compare fairly: £429 / 1.175 => £365.11

Converting pounds to dollars: £429 = $539.94 (currency rate is 1 GBP = 1.47884 USD)

So, the difference (before taking into account the import duties of ~10%) is $539.94 - $499.99 or ~$40.

Subtracting $53 (estimated) of import duty means Apple is charging less than they do in the USA.

Simon.

Re:Prove it

[DangerFace]

From the wiki on life expectancy:

Average lifespan at birth in the UK: 79.4 years

Average lifespan at birth in the US: 78.2 years

So, minor win for the UK's far inferior system there. Now, from the wiki on infant mortality rates:

Infant deaths per 1000 live births / under 5's deaths per 1000 live births in the UK: 4.8 / 6.0

Infant deaths per 1000 live births / under 5's deaths per 1000 live births in the US: 6.3 / 7.8

Another one called for the Kingdom, there. Again, not a huge difference, but pretty significant if you're a parent of 1.8 out of 1000 children. So, the question seems to boil down to a choice between expensive good care or cheap effective care.