by admin » Sun Apr 27, 2014 4:40 pm
It's possible that majority part of the higher prices in EU is due to the VAT. I am not familiar with VAT since I don't live in Europe, but Apple price may already include the cost of VAT they have to pay (eg. neither Apple or developers are getting any of the extra amount you are paying due to higher prices, sale as the up to 10% sales tax collected in the USA). For Google Play, the VAT is probably applied separately on the invoice because the price seems to list at much closer conversion rate. After doing some online searches, it seems to indicate Apple was previously using a loophole where it was able to apply a very low VAT to the cost by selling the goods from low VAT countries, but they now have to pay and collect the full VAT amount based on where the customer lives. Again, I have no clue how VAT works in the each of the App Store, so what I mentioned here may not be accurate.