I don't dispute that and I completely agree. It seems when most Europeans complain about getting ripped off, it's their government they should be blaming.
In Europe we have higher taxes, and you're right we should complain with our government about that.
Anyway Apple doesn't apply a fair currency exchange to the base price, I'll give you an example
iPhone 7
USA no taxes -> $649, with California taxes $709
Italy we have a price of €799, including about 150 of taxes so without our expensive VAT we'd pay €649. It is like saying $1 = €1
So for iPhone 7 32GB
€799 = $949 (vat included)
€649 = $770 (no taxes)
Even if you exclude taxes, we pay a lot more: $649 -> $770
France and Germany have similar prices, they pay only a few $ less than us. I don't know about the UK since they have another currency.
I understand they want to avoid losing money due to exchange rates changing over time, so I wouldn't complain about a small increase in price, but we're talking about 20% more, that's too much.
If the price of iPhone 8 will be $999 as rumored it will cost a little more than the maxed out 7s+, so about €1200, and that's more than $1400 at current exchange rate.
Some people will still buy it I'm sure, but it would cost too much for the majority of customers.
Maybe Europe is not an important market to Apple, I don't know, but they can't expect to sell tens of millions of phones with that price in the EU.
I could afford it, but I'm not paying so much for a phone, I'll keep my 6s for a longer period of time just like I'm keeping my Mac for another year, since even their Mac prices are exaggerated.