Outside of North America, it would be bizarre to not include VAT. Anytime you see the € or £ symbol, you can assume it's VAT included.
I am outside of North America and have been for about 3/4 of my adult life.
The issue with adding VAT to prices on a forum with people living in a lot of different places is that VAT rates vary greatly from place to place.
To get an idea what an Apple product costs, it's more helpful to look at the price charged prior to taxes, tax deductions, educational discounts and other factors that will depend entirely on the specific cases of each reader.
It might be worth noting that outside North America, we all see and think about prices post-tax.
The fact tax was mentioned at all was likely for your benefit, with the knowledge there are a lot of North Americans here…
What is the point of not including VAT? You still have to pay it. It is not like you move across the continent just to pay a few percents less.
You're saying this to someone who twice took a 24-hour train from Beijing to Hong Kong to buy an Apple computer for 27% less due to HK not having an additional electronics tax.
A lot of my friends in Taiwan used to buy macs in HK for the same reason.
Except for burgerland, EU prices include taxes and are pretty much same in all jurisdictions, especially for electronics.
This is most likely because OP used Euros. In Europe, prices are listed including VAT. So in day to day life, you only see prices with VAT for your country included.
I would never compare prices without VAT.
> it's around €650, including VAT.
Whatever taxes and discounts apply to the commenter’s own idiosyncratic situation have nothing to do with the price of the product.
A couple of years ago, I might have cared what the price of an M2 with Pasadena sales taxes was since I lived there at the time, but I sure wouldn’t have included them when talking about Apple prices here.
Similarly, VAT costs are between you and whatever jurisdiction you live in that’s levying them. Apple isn’t the one to thank or complain to about them.