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Adobe To Australians: Fly To US For Cheaper Software
angry tapir writes "It's been a long-running joke that it's cheaper for Australians to get a plane ticket to the U.S. if they want to buy Adobe's Creative Suite instead of paying local prices. But appearing before a parliamentary inquiry into the disparity between IT prices in Australia and elsewhere, Adobe's local chief appeared to suggest just that."
Other companies gave their responses to the inquiry as well. Microsoft said they'll simply charge what the market will bear. Apple tossed out a host of reasons for the price difference; its retail partners, digital content owners, exchange rates, taxes, import duties, and an apparent inability to alter the price set by its U.S. parent company.
Longer warranties, import taxes and sales taxes are just costs of doing business. And costs of doing business are passed along to the customer. Did you really expect a commercial company to let higher costs eat into their profit margin? If taxes are being raised, prices go up. If legislation is passed that makes it more expensive for companies to operate, prices go up.
Initially, yes. But it was overturned by the supreme court.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Seriously. There are organized trips now to the US. Not just for TVs and games and stuff like that.
People will fly to US and buy their entire kitchen set. (Most can work both 110v and 220v now).
Even after paying the shipping container and the VAT, it is still significantly cheaper than buying in Australia.
Because the 'charging' circuit in an online UPS has to be able to supply 100% of the load power and any charging power 100% of the time. Similarly, the inverter has to handle 100% duty cycle. Most UPSs are designed to charge slowly and rely on the inverter duty cycle to be limited by the Ah rating of the battery. (In other words, the inverter won't overheat after 10 minutes because the battery will only last for 5 minutes). That's why they warn you to NOT add batteries externally in parallel to the internal one - you may end up with a UPS fire from an under-rated, under-cooled inverter.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
My thoughts exactly, that's part of why I suspected from the start that a lot of people just don't get it.
VAT. The VA stands for Value Added. A company pays tax on the value it has added to a product, nothing more.
So if a company buys in parts from China, puts them into a device, and sells the device (onto another company, consumer, whoever), then it pays VAT on the things it bought and CHARGES VAT on the things it sold. The difference in VAT is the only thing it has to actually *PAY* to the government.
So if it changes prices, and the things that cost it £50 to build it then has to sell for £40, it actually GETS MONEY BACK from the government in the form of a VAT rebate. If it sells them for £50, it pays no VAT (effectively). If it sells them for £60 it pays the VAT on the £10 only (it pays VAT on £50 but it credited VAT on £60).
That's basically all there is to it. Every company in the EU knows how to deal with it and if they aren't "adding value", they don't pay VAT. It's basically a profit-based tax. No profit, no tax.
In terms of the end consumer, the only person who doesn't ever "add value", they pay a 20% sales tax, in effect. But because the company that produces it isn't subjected to lots of complicated and high taxes, and it isn't charged every time it goes through another company's hands, the price ends up about the same as anywhere else.
There is *nothing* stopping a company selling things cheaper with VAT. In fact, it positively encourages them to!
Also most online UPSes produce a sine wave, where cheap standby ones generate a square like wave. Sine wave inverters are of course more expensive.
There is. There's a myriad of grey market importers based overseas like e-Global Digital Cameras, there's plenty of locally based (i.e. forced to comply with local warranty and tax laws) companies which offer drop shipping likw Kogan who you may have heard of since they've been featured on Slashdot a few times.
Then for everything else there's reshipping companies in the USA like Re-ship or Meimei who will provide you with a USA address to drop the product to and then forward ship your parcel onto you for a small fee.