21–30 of 259 posts
I live in New York. Thank God I quit smoking in 1980. A pack of cigarettes in New York costs about $15, in some stores, and no less than $10, outside of the local Native American facilities/reservations. That's almost all taxes.
I mean, that’s a good thing, right? Smokers should pay for the externalities their habit has on society as a whole.
The article excludes the cost of import duty, and other taxes (see daedalus's comment). It is a false argument to say that if I didn't pay tax things could be cheaper eg. if I break the law I can get a cheaper iPhone. Getting caught for breaking the law is a stochastic system, but the expected value is lower than most people think. Edit: How far are people willing to take this? Should we share an article saying someo…
Electronics is cheaper in US but every time I fly back to Europe they check my bags.
The article excludes the cost of import duty, and other taxes (see daedalus's comment). It is a false argument to say that if I didn't pay tax things could be cheaper eg. if I break the law I can get a cheaper iPhone. Getting caught for breaking the law is a stochastic system, but the expected value is lower than most people think. Edit: How far are people willing to take this? Should we share an article saying someo…
Taxation is theft!
If the price from a trillion dollar company is this costly, then vote with your wallets for god's sake. Simply don't buy. There are (fortunately) plenty of viable alternatives to Apple that are more reasonably priced.
This goes for many products and services, because of different tax and import rates. From Europe it is often still cheaper to fly to a different country to buy clothes, electronics, etc. Problem is that you still have to pay the import tax once you cross the border back into your own country. Hence why many airline crew ran (run?) side hustles of buying and selling luxury goods, since they were (are?) rarely checked…
For example, when I bought my Audio Technica ATH-M50X in the US for about $100 (while in my country they were about twice as expensive) I just had it around my neck as I was listening music through it. No one asked a thing.
In all fairness, I went to the US for fun and got a chance to use them at a demo and was immediately sold.
Same in Brazil, here the import taxes are crazy, coupled with regular taxes it amounts to 100% (doubling the price). In the case of the iPhone you might need to find a cheap flight to the US, but a Macbook will land you a couple days in Disney.
Some years ago a lawmaker calculated the taxes for game consoles and concluded they are 273% of the US price.
Also when Sony was heavily bashed for the price of Playstation 4 at launch, people claiming they were price gouging, Sony blamed taxes, so I went and calculated the taxes myself, as if my store would sell it (I own a store but sell other stuff). End result was that Sony wasn't lying, 71% of the final price was taxes.
How exactly do you avoid customs when flying back? Electronics is cheaper in US but every time I fly back to Europe they check my bags.
From anecdotes only, German customs are thorough, they check every parcel, and this is not the case all across the EU.