• VAT is that?

    by  • 17 February, 2003 • Weird • 0 Comments

    Today I got a reasonable explanation from someone on the seemingly random way of including VAT in the prices of some goods and not in others, as I told you yesterday. It happened in another electronics shop I went to today. The salesperson seemed a little bit more open to my questioning him on the subject and his English was far better too. The way it works is this: goods that have an obvious appeal to consumers are priced inclusive of VAT. Those that are aimed at businesses are priced without VAT, which makes sense. If a shop caters for the two categories however, you will see prices with and without VAT. That solves the mystery. It also sheds an unexpected light on customer perception: apparently individual consumers are not a target group for: computers, monitors and printers (these are priced exclusive of VAT), yet these individuals are assumed likeable targets for: games (that run on the above computers), spare harddisks, CD-writers, video cards, network cards (that are to be built in into these computers) and various other consumables like rewritable CD’s (why would that be?), mousepads, etc… Now you know.

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