I am considering buying the new 13" macbook pro and while browsing the apple store I saw both the price in dollars $1199 which is £775 and the UK price is £999. So i was just wondering if anyone knows why there is such a huge difference in price?
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USA pricing vs UK pricing
- Thread starter knaggs89
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How do you explain pricing in Scotland where everyone is famously tight? (I'm Scottish so I can say that)
If you don't like the taxes, vote in the election in 4 weeks
For who though, they're all a bunch of lying *****.
You're forgetting, in the USA they also don't have any kind of import tax, whereas in the UK, when you import a high value item (even if for resale) you have to pay ~15% Import Tax AND 17.5% VAT (Apple won't have to pay it as they're VAT Registered).
So if you take the £775:
Add 15% import tax: £891.25
Add 17.5% VAT: £1047.22
So you're technically getting it cheaper than it should be!
Blame the stupid person currently in office in the UK. And just don't vote in the elections, they're all lying B****rds quite frankly.
So if you take the £775:
Add 15% import tax: £891.25
Add 17.5% VAT: £1047.22
So you're technically getting it cheaper than it should be!
Blame the stupid person currently in office in the UK. And just don't vote in the elections, they're all lying B****rds quite frankly.
Actually there is no duty on laptop or desktop computers. Check at HMRC.
$999 is £645 at current exchange rates. Adding VAT comes to £758 approx. So Apple is charging a considerable premium for the base 13" Macbook Pro. I think there must be a significant "Treasure Island" effect in operation because it's hard to see a justification for such a price disparity.
Cheers,
jahman
Ah, I thought the US price of the base 13" was $999 but you're right it's $1199. That's £774 at present exchange rates(google "1199 dollars in sterling") or £909 including VAT. So we're talking a £90, or roughly 10%, disparity. It's probably reasonable as a hedge against foreign exchange risk.
Cheers,
jahman
VAT is inclusive. 999GBP before vat is ~825GBP. Which is about $1,280.
Relatively small difference, I feel like I've seen many things that have a higher price differential. Media, for example, you UK people pay through the roof for. How much are songs on iTunes? And new videogames over there go for 50GBP or $77.50, when they are $60 here.
You are adding two sets of sales tax.
If Apple wants to get $1499 from a US sale, they advertise for $1499, and the customer actually pays $1499 + for example 6.55 = $1596. If Apple wants to get $1499 from a UK sale, they need to convert $ to £, makes £969, then add 17.5% VAT, makes £1139. That should be the advertised price in the UK, and that should be what a UK customer pays.
Thats wrong because VAT is stated as an inclusive rate. Stating the 17.5% VAT as an exclusive rate is about 21.2%. So take you 969*1.21= 1,174.43
Yeah, I screwed up in my earlier post by comparing the taxed US price to the UK price. Sorry about that. I was trying to show the differences that taxes make and did it wrong.
The US price is without taxes. I worked forward from there to a price in sterling inclusive of VAT of £909 at present exchange rates, a difference of £90 or roughly 10%. You've miscalculated your figures: £999 including VAT is actually £850 excluding VAT not £825. £850 is $1315 giving a disparity of $116 which is still in the order of 10% of the US price excluding taxes.
Cheers,
jahman
£851 + VAT at 17.5% is £999.92. £851 at todays exchange rate is $1,316. The US price is $1,199 so in the UK we pay $117 more, which is £75, to Apple.
We pay £75 more on the £999 13" MBP to Apple than US customers, not including taxes.
In most markets outside the USA they use the excuse of "import costs" but if you break it down they charge far more than that. It is just greed. They see the opportunity to slide some more profit in and they take it. The thing that get's my goat is that they lie about it and call it "import costs" as if it has nothing to do with them.
Ha you should probably know how your own tax system works. VAT is INCLUSIVE, meaning that when something is 100 pounds including 17.5% VAT, that the VAT tax included in that 100 pounds is 17.50.
As I said, expressing the 17.5% VAT as an exclusive tax, as American sales taxes are expressed, would be 21.2%.
So to do the math your way:
$1199 is 777 pounds. Factoring in a 17.5% VAT is the same as multiplying 777 by 1.212 (because the difference between that product and 777 will be 17.5% of the product). So with VAT it would be 942 pounds.
The simple fact is that Apple stores outside of the US are run as separate entities there are differences other than in price.
For example, in the UK there are no academic versions of Apple software in the US, there are. In the UK, however, if you bought Apple software through the HE Store, you would get a full version at a greatly reduced rate FCS, for instance, is about £250 the discount is not only much greater than a US academic version, but the software is fully upgradeable.
There will be different pricing for different markets for a number of reasons but lets face it, Apple is like any company, its all about the bottom line.
