triock: 8. What about VAT / sales tax?
All the prices shown on our page are inclusive of value added tax (VAT) and sales tax. So it's always the exact order total visible at checkout - no additional costs!
HypersomniacLive: Honest question - wouldn't that also apply to US users regarding Sales Taxes?
stoicsentry: I'm not sure, honestly. I can't remember ever paying taxes (or being told that a company was paying taxes for me) on digital goods. The U.S. doesn't have a VAT or a federal sales tax so that's different. There are some smaller state and local sales taxes but apparently they aren't applicable.
Somewhat related thing to mention:
Back in before & early 2009, Steam was showing the non-VAT inclusive prices in their store. So what happened to us customers who had gotten used "complete prices" (I.E. with VAT) was that everytime we we were about check-out, we were slammed with VAT just about we were about the make the payment.
What I have understood is that quite soon (around half-way 2009) Steam-store started (finally) selling items in complete-prices after enough of complains.
For those who don't know, unlike in USA where "
people are entrepreneurs", most the tax-handling for "
normal" normal citizens is "
automated" for the msot part (at least this is the case in
Finland). For example, we pay the income tax with a "
tax deduction card" which taxes our wages
before the paycheck, so employees don't have to worry about not paying income tax afterwards (unless of course one had tried to swindle by not telling the true amount of wage being earned). Most of the other various insurance / health care-plan and pension related payments are done by the employers too.
Entrepreneurs in Finland of course work in similiar fashion as else where, paying for pension fees and everything else. And yes, they're technically allowed to purchase items & services "tax free"; all they need to do is to apply for tax reductions and such when they're filling their tax return-forms.
Couple of reference links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Finland http://www.vero.fi/en-US/Individuals Just few grains of info for those who's like to understand (at least a part of) the situation better.
Some say VAT is just an unneeded hassle.
I personally can only say "
well, it's there"...
Granted, I personally though numerous things were already automatically sold to me VAT-uncluded, especially when it comes to game bundles; guess this wasn't the case after all since I I've started to see VAT-being once again slapped just before the payments.
But, just a for a reference, it didn't change the price too much in the end (e.g. 6$ x 1.24 =
7,44).
I am known to be a penny pincher. But only to an extend...