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Comment by kekub | Hacker News Reader

> I guess we should thank apple for not allowing different pricing in different regions.

Apple lets me pay 699 Euro (http://store.apple.com/de/buy-iphone/iphone5s) in Germany vs 649$ (http://store.apple.com/us/buy-iphone/iphone5s) in the US.

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Just a reminder in this case: EU prices include the VAT (near 20% in many cases), while in the US the state tax (often 10%) is not included in public prices.

Except 1 EUR = 1.31 USD right now, so even with a 19% VAT, the EUR value should be lower than USD: $649 + 19% VAT is 588€ not 699. 19% european surcharge on top of the VAT.

How about import taxes then? I can imagine Apple is a US company and thus pays either no or very little import tax when they get their shipments from the production facilities in China, but to get it to Europe costs more money. I can imagine. I know nothing.

No import taxes on laptops or cell phones in the EU.

My hypothesis has always been that Apple charges the whole country-wide infrastructure (retail, marketing, etc.) on products, while in US (where it would be harder/impossible to split nation-wide efforts from world-wide efforts) this is not being done.

This also accounts for different prices in different European countries; e.g.: the cost of making business is very high in Italy (high salary taxes, high network costs, impossible to fire/sack people, etc.) so they make their products cost more in Italy to account for the additional costs of running operations there.

> My hypothesis has always been that Apple charges the whole country-wide infrastructure (retail, marketing, etc.) on products

There's no Apple retail or marketing in Belgium.

There is no state sales tax that is 10%. If you combine city, county, and state sales tax, you get 10% in just two cities in the entire United States (both in Alabama).

That tells me, that there are at least 8 cities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_State...

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