Just_Ben,

Actually I was trying to explain why companies don't calculate with VAT. In the other thread I gave another example: Not all your expenses include VAT. If you buy stamps - no VAT. You pay your employees - no VAT. Now when you mix your VATed bills (from your suppliers) and your VAT-free bills (stamps and salaries) in your book-keeping, your will not get correct numbers unless you look out for the net value of all your bills.

Even if you (as a small retailer) don't like think about book-keeping much and say to yourself "oh today I bought stamps for 220 € and a Wii for 249 €" it would mislead yourself into thinking that the stamps were cheaper than the Wii.

Actually you can deduct those 40 € VAT on the Wii bill from the VAT you have to pay to the tax office, while your stamps bill doesn't include any VAT and cannot be deducted.

So you should say "today I bought stamps for 220 € and a Wii for 209 € net", because then you would have two figures that are comparable and you would see that the stamps were more expensive than the Wii.

The only other way to compare stamp (or salary) expenses to VATed expenses would be to add a virtual VAT to the stamp bill (or salaries) just in your head. How much sense would that make?

Or another example. Let's say a retailer from Austria went to Games Convention in Leipzig and saw that price on Nintendo's booth. And let's say there was no distributor for Nintendo in Austria (I don't know if there is one), so the retailer will order his games for Christmas in Leipzig.

Now if a company buys products outside its country, but inside the EU, it will get a VAT-free bill (like stamps or salaries, see above), so this retailer would want to know the VAT-free price for Super Mario Galaxy and if that quote (showing 35 €) included VAT he would have had to bring a calculator to substract VAT everywhere. Therefore I think it's more likely that the quote was without VAT.

While I guess that Nintendo will have some kind of Austrian branch there were hundreds of companies present at GC, and many of those will work from one office in Europe and look for orders cross-EU and therefore by all means should show the net prices without VAT.

sorry to intrude... what does VAT stand for?

Value Added Tax... Google usually helps a lot (Wikipedia too): http://www.google.com/search?q=vat

Well, in terms of used games, my friend was offered $3 for one NHL game that he was stupid enough to trade into Electronics Boutique and they sold it back for over $30.