BRAVO ! at last, "The IT Pricing Inquiry being conducted by Australia's House Committee "

Shouldn’t the British House of Commons do the same as well ?

British customer has been paying “a special� price for ages.

__________________________________________________ __

IT Pricing inquiry bares its fangs, prepares to bite Apple over price gouging, tiny tax bill

By Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor • Get more from this author

Posted in Policy, 11th February 2013 02:35 GMT

Free whitepaper – Four Steps to Defeating a DDoS Attack

The IT Pricing Inquiry being conducted by Australia's House Committee on Infrastructure and Communications has issued summons to Apple, Microsoft and Adobe. The inquiry kicked off in 2012 and is investigating why Australians pay more for hardware and software than those overseas. At current exchange rate one Australian dollar buys $US1.03. Yet Australians often pay more in Australian dollars than Americans are charged in their currency. An example of the discrepancy can be seen in the price of a 16GB WiFi iPad with Retina Display. In the USA the fondleslab costs $US499. In Australia it's $AUD539. A year's worth of Office 365 Home Premium costs $AUD119 down under, but $US99.99 in the land of the free.

Multinational IT outfits have said Australians pay more because of local costs, but have never explained just what those costs are. Many use “transfer pricing� so their goods are legally sold in a nation other than Australia, even though their goods end up being used down under.

While the Inquiry has in the passed expressed very keen interest in an appearance by three companies mentioned above, none has shown particular interest in doing so. Some have said they're happy to give evidence in private, but as is often the case with these things, the Inquiry is about being seen to be doing something as well as actually doing something.

Forcing the three to appear therefore means they'll have to explain their pricing practices in public. And they'll have to do so credibly, as the House of Representatives' powers mean “A person summoned to appear before a committee but who refuses to attend, or a witness who refuses to answer a question or produce a document, or who lies to or misleads a committee, may be punished for contempt by reprimand, fine or imprisonment.�

The Reg will do its utmost to cover the March 22 hearing.

[...]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02...crosoft_adobe/

On 11/02/2013 08:56, Omni wrote:
Shouldn’t the British House of Commons do the same as well ?

British customer has been paying “a special” price for ages.

(snip)

You forget that 20% VAT is charged on the price of the goods, so that
the higher the price the greater the tax revenue. Now who gets that tax
revenue? Let me think...

Unless something is outrageously higher in price here in the UK than in
the US, it won't stop customers buying it (and not even then if you see
the queues outside O2 and Apple shops for the latest I-whatever
offering). On that basis, why would the Government object to seeing the
higher prices leading to higher tax revenues for its coffers?

--

Jeff

On 2/11/2013 3:56 AM, Omni wrote:
Shouldn’t the British House of Commons do the same as well ?

British customer has been paying “a special� price for ages.

__________________________________________________ __

IT Pricing inquiry bares its fangs, prepares to bite Apple over price
gouging, tiny tax bill

[snip the whinging]

a) all multinationals price locally; they charge what the market will bear.

"Omni" wrote:

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0045_01CE0835.A5F5C780"
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Windows Live Mail 16.4.3505.912

Formats suitable for e-mail are not suitable for Usenet. Use plain text
(ASCII7) and never use quoted-printable or MIME formats that involve
logical line wrapping. Your excessively long physical lines in your
post quoted below were wrapped to a reasonable line length (76 chars, or
less). Configure your NNTP client for proper posting in Usenet.

E-mail and Usenet are NOT the same thing.

Shouldnÿt the British House of Commons do the same as well ?
British customer has been paying ´a special¡ price for ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_a...European_Union
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxatio...alue_added_tax

The IT Pricing Inquiry being conducted by Australia's House Committee
on Infrastructure and Communications has issued summons to Apple,
Microsoft and Adobe. The inquiry kicked off in 2012 and is
investigating why Australians pay more for hardware and software than
those overseas.

"Overseas" is unclear. Could be the USA or China (where the products
are manufactured) since the viewpoint is from Australia. So how much is
Australia's import taxes (clearance fees, customs duty, Goods & Services
Tax, etc) for these imported items?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax#Australia

At current exchange rate one Australian dollar buys $US1.03.

And yet it's not the current exchange rate that determines the higher
costs due to surcharges the gov't decides to laden upon imports.

Multinational IT outfits have said Australians pay more because of
local costs, but have never explained just what those costs are.

Yeah, never expect the gov't to understand themself. So we have the
Aussie gov't summoning companies to tell the Aussie gov't that they add
surcharges to goods imported into their country. The gov't gets to
inquire why the gov't adds fees, duties, and taxes onto imported items
and requires someone else to them that. Why am I not surprised.

On 11/02/2013 09:29, Jeff Layman wrote:
On 11/02/2013 08:56, Omni wrote:
Shouldn’t the British House of Commons do the same as well ?

British customer has been paying “a special” price for ages.

(snip)

You forget that 20% VAT is charged on the price of the goods, so that
the higher the price the greater the tax revenue. Now who gets that tax
revenue? Let me think...

Unless something is outrageously higher in price here in the UK than in
the US, it won't stop customers buying it (and not even then if you see
the queues outside O2 and Apple shops for the latest I-whatever
offering). On that basis, why would the Government object to seeing the
higher prices leading to higher tax revenues for its coffers?


Here's something else...

Adobe buckles, cuts prices ahead of Australian inquiry
"A side order of schadenfraude
By Richard Chirgwin • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 12th February 2013 22:04 GMT
Free whitepaper – Open standards-based cloud solutions
If only we’d all known it would be so easy: in the wake of being
summonsed by the Australian parliament’s inquiry into IT pricing, Adobe
has cut the price of its Creative Cloud suite to Australian users.

The pricing inquiry kicked off last year to look at the practise of
geographic price discrimination by international vendors. While
Microsoft, Apple and Adobe had been invited to appear in front of the
inquiry to back up their written submissions, they had not done so."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02...uts_au_prices/