Steve Jobs addresses international iPad pricing; Apple lowers 16, 32 GB iPad prices in Germany

“Apple has lowered its pricing on its 16GB and 32GB iPad models in Germany following a number of complaints from customers,” Charles Starrett reports for iLounge. “iPad pricing for the German market was announced on Friday, with prices running €15 higher across the board than in Italy and France, a difference that Apple CEO Steve Jobs said was due to a new copyright levy on computers in that country. ‘Blame your government,’ Jobs reportedly said in an email response to a concerned customer. ‘Germany just added a new copyright levy for computers.'”

But “the levy in question only included computers with internal storage of 40GB or higher… ‘We found out this weekend that iPad is not subject to a new German copyright tax that we previously thought it was subject to,’ Jobs wrote in [a later] response,” Starrett reports. “As a result, the 16GB and 32GB iPad with Wi-Fi models are now priced at €499 and €599, respectively, in Germany, while 16GB and 32GB Wi-Fi + 3G models are priced at a €100 premium; pricing on 64GB models, which are subject to the levy, remained at €714 for Wi-Fi only models and €814 for Wi-Fi + 3G versions.”

Full article, with links, here.

Eric Slivka reports for MacRumors, “With Apple’s announcement on Friday regarding availability of the iPad in nine new countries later this month, a number of potential customers expressed dismay at the apparent higher prices in those countries relative to those in the United States. Several of those customers took the time to email Apple CEO Steve Jobs with complaints on the issue, two of whom shared his identical responses with us. ‘Please educate yourself. UK prices must by law include VAT, which is around 18%. US prices do not include tax.'”

“Value added tax (VAT) is similar to the sales tax that is familiar to most residents of the United States, but is applied uniformly throughout the country for a given type of item and is included in the advertised pricing,” Slivka reports. “Sales tax in the United States is not included in advertised pricing, as it varies significantly by region, even down to the municipality level.”

Slivka reports, “The standard VAT rate in the UK is 17.5%, meaning that the £429 base price for the 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad in the UK is actually only £365 in ‘pre-tax’ pricing. At current exchange rates, this corresponds to approximately $540 in the United States, or an approximately $40 premium for U.K. customers. While the price difference is not insignificant, it is considerably smaller than it might appear at first glance.”

Read more in the full article here.