They’re not even the same currency at all, yet Steam or any other digital storefront decides to price a 80€ ($91) game the same as a $80 (69€) one when the conversions in reality are different to what the algorithm suggests. It’s reflected on Steam DB that Euro has a higher markup in comparison to US Dollar because of this, since I hear EU players nagging about paying 80€ at launch the same as US players don’t like paying $80.
Do EU prices normally include VAT? US list prices for games cannot include Sales Tax, because the tax can vary widely by State (or even by local government).
Yes, game prices include VAT. In Europe any displayed prices be they in a supermarket or on an online store always include VAT. It’s not even allowed to advertise prices without including VAT.
That’s not strictly true, because online shops for tradespeople often have a toggle to control whether VAT is included (and switch it off by default).
That’s a special case though, because VAT is handled differently between businesses
From what I know businesses still pay the VAT but they can get it back from the government later.
I’m sure my electrician wanted painting cash for some other reason, he was definitely going to pay his taxes.
Taxes are always included in europe, so yes… though im pretty sure even with the sales tax games in the US end up being cheaper :p
I dunno. If someone sets the price at the same number…let’s see.
The current exchange rate is 1.1486 dollars per euro.
https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/EURUSD/
I’m pretty confident that VAT is higher than that in some countries in Europe.
searches
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/value-added-tax-vat-rates-europe/
This says 19% in Germany to 27% in Hungary. Mostly 20% or a little higher.
That assumes that whatever prices OP is looking at does indeed include VAT for the EU price (which would require knowing his location), and does not include sales tax in the US (which even aside from US convention of showing prices sans tax, presumably is the case if he’s not in the US, as there’d be no way to calculate sales tax anyway, since that would require a specific location in the US).
The prices don’t look to be that far off in that scenario, but the EU price would be slightly lower.
EDIT: Wait, Hungary is one of the EU members that still doesn’t use the euro, right? They use, uh…forints?
goes looking
Yeah:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_forint
So assuming—I don’t know—that in Hungary, Steam lists prices in forints rather than euros, I’m guessing that there probably isn’t a 1:1 dollar:forint price ratio, as a forint is nowhere near a 1:1 exchange rate with the dollar.
EDIT2: Well, unless a publisher uses a 1:1 dollar:euro ratio for the price and then Steam auto-converts to forints before displaying a price to a Hungarian user or something, I guess.