There's no "American tax". I was chatting with a friend from Croatia
who was confused by how American sales tax works because apparently
it's more common elsewhere (or particularly in Europe) to roll the
sales tax (VAT?) into the advertised price of the good. In America,
each state has it's own sales tax laws (not all states have sales tax)
which only applies to goods sold within the state. Americans  suffer
no sales taxes on the national level (yet...).

Furthermore, when I bought my Neo 1973 it appeared on my debit card as
a purchase from FIC's Taiwan headquarters and NOT the California
location where it shipped from so I wasn't charged a direct tax for
that purchase. Of course, somewhere along the line, the price was
inflated as some government skimmed off the top of commerce, but
that's factored into the quoted price, and I'm sure you're asking only
about taxes applied directly to the end consumer (in this case, you).

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 5:02 PM, Robin Paulson <robin.paulson@gmail.com> wrote:
quoted text
> while i was looking up the gst/duty i'll have to pay for importing my
> freerunner, this occurred to me - is american/californian/whatever
> sales tax included already in the price of the phone? will i be taxed
> twice, or will your local tax only be applied for local purchases?
>
> this might seem like a dumb question, but i've bought plenty of stuff
> from another country where the seller included tax even though it's
> being shipped abroad
>
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> community@lists.openmoko.org
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>

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