Noticed the new Canon 50mm 1.8 STM was unveiled earlier this week. Priced at $129.
Had a look around various UK retailers and of course it's priced at £129.
Still cheaper than flying to America to buy one.
Well nothing,really.What's does the cost of flights have to do with it?
Well nothing,really.
What has the price of equipment several thousand miles away have to do with the price here?
Just buy one from the USA and ship it over.
A quick Google seems to suggest that the state with the highest tax rate is Tennessee at 9.45%. So rounded up to 10% would make the lens $142. At today's exchange rate equates to £90
Well, if your happy to pay over the odds for the same product, but I don't see any reason why the UK prices are more than US.
This shows a desperate lack of knowledge of even basic global economics and the kind of mindset that isolates us from the rest of the world. Life ain't that simple and if you don't like it tough.
Put it a different way, would you care to get paid the same figure you currently own but in USD? how about not having the NHS? No, thought not but that's the reality of things - it's about relative affordability not absolute price and each country's economy is set up that way, taxes, public services and cost of goods included.
I figured it out. Canon charge more in the UK
No, you haven't figured it out - because you ignore any facts that disagree with what the Daily Mule tells you.
Canon DO NOT charge more in the UK. The difference in price between different countries is down to two factors.
Firstly, there's the amount of duty and tax that the government charge. This varies from country to country, being fairly high in the EU and fairly low in the US.
Second, there's the amount of discount applied by the vendors (people who sell the gear). In the US there is a lot of competition between vendors - so they apply large discounts from the launch of a new product - otherwise their competitors will undercut them and they will lose sales. In the UK there isn't as much competition. And the retailers have reached an unspoken agreement whereby they sell anything new at the full MRSP - zero discount. This mazimises their profits as there will always be people who are willing to pay this 'early adopter's tax'. Some buy the gear with other people's money, some really need the gear ASAP, some just have more money than sense and others just can't wait to be the first on their block with the new shiny toy and are willing to pay for the kudos.
After this 'goldrush', sales will start to slow, one of the retailers will apply a small discount - which the others will follow. Quite quickly the price drops to around 80% of the MRSP - which is, presumably, where the retailers are just about making a profit. You can see this happening for fairly recent gear at CameraPriceBusters.com - here's their page for the 24-70 MkII. Note how the price stuck around £1800 for almost a year - then dropped down to its current £1400 (a drop of 22%). That's £1170 without tax - which is around $1800 or $100 cheaper than you can get it in B&H in the US.
My gripe is the disparity between RRP here and in the U.S.
What he said.The RRP is irrelevant. All that matters is the price that retailers charge. And, ignoring the early-adopters tax, we are cheaper than the US in most cases.
There's more than just VAT and import duty.I'm sure that import duty plays a small factor, but I can't believe it would be by such a large margin.
The big difference is that UK retailers seem to charge an early-adopters tax and retailers in other countries don't.
It would be interesting to find out how/why this happens.
What local operation are you referring to?There's more than just VAT and import duty.
There's also the overheads of running the local operation - salaries, social security costs, rent&rates, energy, transportation, marketing, cost of FX hedging, the Transfer Pricing policy adopted by the tax authority of the country, cost of financing the local operation (including tax deductibility of the interest or equity cost)...
The local operation that purchases the goods from the parent company and imports them to the local market and distributes them. e.g. Nikon UK.What local operation are you referring to?
Do we also assume that the US does not have this operation that needs paying for?