WIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..........anounced release

VAT is short for "Value Added Tax" and is (roughly) similar to the American concept of sales tax.

A big difference though is how prices are quoted. Most shops in the US will quote prices without tax. Most shops in Europe will quote prices with tax. As a result it isn't fair to directly compare MSRP without taking that into consideration.

The UK generally has a 17.5% VAT across the board, but it can vary from 15-25% depending on country across Europe.

-hl718

 

Japan used to be like the states where they never actually showed the added tax to the price of the item you were buying (tax here is 5%). I could never understand the idea of not showing a price without tax since this wasn't the price you had to pay. Coming from the UK were the price you see is the price you pay really made life difficult when shopping in Japan when I first came here. Thankfully they have now changed to the same style used in the UK where all prices displayed include the tax. There are still a few shops that show the price without tax in a small font then the "real" price above it in a big font. Why? Makes no sense to me. Probably because I was born in the UK.

Yakumo

 

I m with Yakumo on this one. The final price makes alot of sense!

The reason that tax is kept off from US products is because for example, paying 250 for a Wii without tax included in the price means 250 net money for the shop, in contrast with the 250 euro price which includes the tax and the shop actually gets less than 250.

 

The reason its that way in the U.S, and possibly why they did it in japan, is each state has its own tax rate. Here in California its 7.75%, while somewhere like arizona its probably less.

So when i pay for somehting, the sales tax is the money that goes directly to the state, however natural food is not taxed. I am shocked are sales tax is lower then some other states considering ours is one of the most expensive to live in.

 

By the way you can download the press conference here:

http://www.jeux-france.com/downloads6480_video-nintendo-wii-conference-eu.html

 

Maybe it's because I'm from the UK but I can't see any justification for it.
The shop is only in one state, so the tax could easily be printed or included in the price. It's not like they can only print one price for the entire country.

You give all the money to the shop & they split the tax out. I don't personally care how much the shop actually gets.

The only reason I can actually think of is a psycological. Often you will see something priced at 19.99, alot of people wouldn't buy the same thing if it said 20.99 ( even though thats what you'll end up paying ). So if they showed the total price they wouldn't be able to con people so easily.

It's the biggest pain though, it really slows you down at the checkout as it's almost impossible to get the correct change ready. It's not like the US has a high taxation either.

In the UK we have 17.5% VAT. VAT is slightly different to sales tax as every time you buy something that qualifies you are supposed to pay it, but a business that is VAT registered can claim it back on items that it buys, while sales tax is only charged to the end user. Businesses have to be VAT registered if they turn over a certain amount. High volume UK sellers on ebay are supposed to register for VAT. wikipedia has an interesting bit of information too: "Following changes introduced on 1 July 2003 (under Directive 2002/38/EC), non-EU businesses providing digital electronic commerce and entertainment products and services to EU countries are also required to register with the tax authorities in the relevant EU member state, and to collect VAT on their sales at the appropriate rate, according to the location of the purchaser."

The main advantage of VAT is that it's really easy to avoid paying any sales tax, with VAT you can usually only avoid paying one stage of it by offering cash in hand.

smf

 

well the whole ending it in 99 is a gimick to kinda sucker the customer into think its slightly less then that or about that.

But again, sales tax is different in each state due to the states area and funding needed.

I belive you when you say vat is a smarter system, dont get me wrong.

But here in the U.S. each state is also independently ran and budgeted(Hence why we have our own govener we elecect for whatever state we live in).

Plus for companies in reality it be a huge pain in the ass to have to make a commercial that represents each states tax(that means they would have to make 50 differenet variations for one ad, and there is a possiblity couple of states won't even carry the product). Even magazines and newspapers are often nationwide.

Plus with a commercial having to be brief and quick, it would look akwared to post the amount included with tax.

Now when I buy stuff off amazon, since none of their shipping branches are located in CA, I do not have to pay sales tax since its an item thats shipped from a different state and I did not make the purchase while on that states soil(otherwise i would be giving tax money to a state im not even stepping foot on or live in).

It makes sense why the dont include amount with tax in advertisements in the U.S., If you lived here in the U.S. it would make sense, but its a bit difficult explain it.

Is there another assembler member thats also in the U.S. that could explain this much simipler?

 

Nice idea but no. Japan is like Europe. The whole country is the same which is how it should be I think. Why sould one part of the SAME country get something cheaper than another part? Makes no sense at all.

Yakumo

 

Yakumo, sales tax is a right of the state. Our country was founded in a way that they wanted to balance the federal and state rights. So as a result, sales tax is something up to the state which they tend to use to fund various things. Each individual state has the right wether to charge sales tax or not. And because of other things that say that one state can not tax another state, if you buy something online or mail order from another state that the company you are buying from has no presence in, you can not be taxed as that is against the law.

And yes the 99 cents is an old trick to fool stupid people. I'm sure I don't have to tell you, it doesn't work. Everyone here understands the sticker price is before tax. It is not that hard to figure out how much you'll really pay. I agree VAT is easier and makes more sense. However then again the Metric system makes more sense, we have been avoiding that one for years or decades depending how you look at it.

 

The US isnt a country per se, but a Federal union of states. Big difference!

 

I`m still going to get one

 

The difference makes sense because each state, county and city in the US can set its own tax rates. Because the country is so varied, this works in the US as some areas don't need as many services and therefore don't need to charge the tax. All taxes have to be approved by local voters, so what you'll sometimes see is a higher tax rate in one area to pay for services that the locality wants and lower tax rates in another area. This applies to all sorts of state taxes, including income and property taxes as well.

-hl718

 

MottZilla,Barcode, and hl718 I could not have explained it any better.

 

I wonder if you can download roms to the sd slot and play them on the wii? I think i am going to start downloading.. i just don't see paying 5 bucks for old ass games.

 

I have a very good feeling its going ot use an encrpted system, which will be hacked eventually of course.

 

While this thread seems to have gone pretty far off what was being discussed on the first page or so, I'll say that nothing about the recent announcement rubbed me the wrong way except for some minor price info;

I mean, $.99 NES games would've been nice, but the fact is that I have a dedicated linux emu box attached to my TV and I won't use virtual console anyway. Why bother when I can play Zelda OoT in 1600x1200 at 60fps for free? (for those concerned with legality/morality, I own three copies of the cart, lol).

The price of the system doesn't really bother me either, although I guess $200 would've been nice. Even though Nintendo has always launched at $200, they can't do that forever. $200 isn't what it used to be back in the 1980s, time marches on and inflation happens, and I don't think $250 is unreasonable given that there's a pack-in game that I think I'd eventually want to buy anyway.

I think the whole idea of the Mii profile is pretty neat, as are the other various uses for the console like the news/weather, photo editing, etc... Between all this and Twilight Princess I should have a lot to do on launch day, so I'll be abandoning my original plan not to buy the system until Mario Galaxy comes out and instead I'll be in line on launch day.

I haven't been this jazzed about a system launch in a very long time, probably not since PS2.

 

I might camp out for it since i have never done that before. Im going to pre order the games on amazon though.

As for pre ordering the wii, i decided to go against, the only places taking them require you to go into a bundle and they always pull some stupied crap like sorry we dont have enough, or were cancling your pre order cause you only have this much so far.

 

All you have to do is shop on an Army base, no taxes at all.

For the majority of casual gamers that do not use emulators, I think the virtual console is a great idea. But I have to agree what they are charging is a little steep. Granted it is the only legit way to play these games sans owning the original hardware.

I'm more interested in playing my own roms on the machine, which should be easy since it accepts SD cards, and will probably be hacked within five minutes of it's release.

 

Haha. I know many people are going to want to play their own roms on the VC as soon as possible, but don't under-estimate how long it may take to make a program that can import your roms. They say when you download whatever files representing the game it is tied to your system so that means a program will have to deal with whatever protections like encryption/checksums as well as tieing it to your console which could require that you buy atleast 1 VC game for it to extract your console's magic number from. I'm sure we could all find some cheap NES game we wouldn't feel too badly about paying 5 bucks for to unlock our own collections.

I didn't preorder Wii, but I hope to be able to go to BestBuy on launch day and buy one along with the games I want.

 

I can't wait to play Excite Truck and Zelda on it.

If everything goes as i'm planning, i'll have a happy christmas with the Wii and the Xbox360.