Originally Posted by
MaryKatherine
It's primarily import duties. Fed tax and Provincial tax.
So this totals over 100% more than the taxes that the US dealers pay? Americans pay a tax when they shop, depending on where they live....
Here in Europe, a VAT tax is something like 23%, but that is a far cry from 100%. Fabric is still about the prices of Canada for nice stuff like she's talking about.
I, personally, think it is just because "they can" and because there are often several middle men, each taking their own cut.
When we were first here in Poland, I noticed Levi 501 jeans were about $100 (1994) a pair--back when in the official Levi stores in the US had them for about $40. It didn't mean that there was 150% more tax on the jeans than in the US. They charged that "because they could" and people would pay it. Fewer stores sold them and so the people who wanted Levi's were willing to pay it or go without. They didn't have promotions like the stores in the US to boost sales. Guess they didn't need the increased revenue. They preferred "fewer sales" with each individual sale making more profit to "more sales/less profit on each individual sale".