Bruncvik

I used mineral oil for the same effect.

Everyone who wants to sell goods or services in a country with VAT (not just the EU) must be registered with the country's tax authorities, collect the VAT on behalf of the government, and transfer the collected tax money to the government. Not all VAT is bad, though, when trading across border. Here are two very common examples:

1. Sale of goods from a higher-VAT country to a lower-VAT country. You have a Web site in Sweden where you list a product for €100. You sell the product to a customer in the UK. You ship the item, and charge the customer €96. That's because the domestic VAT is already baked into the price (in the case of Sweden it's 25%). Shipping outside the VAT jurisdiction, you don't collect the local VAT on behalf of the government, and charge the VAT-less price of €80. You then add the UK VAT (20%). The customer is better off. (Of course, it also works the other way. I buy a lot from Amazon UK, but my country has a higher VAT than the UK, so I pay slightly more than the listed price.)

2. VAT return when leaving the country. The reason you need to show your boarding pass when purchasing goods at the airport is that if you fly outside the country (or, if you are within the EU, the EU as a whole), you will be charged only the price without VAT. That's because these goods are no longer considered to be sold in that country, so VAT cannot be collected on them.

VAT is a little more complex than sales tax, but it affects the entire production chain, not only the final sale, so it allows the governments to collect on domestic economic output, not only on purchasing power. But it's truly aimed at domestic production. For cross-border commerce, import taxes play a much more important role.

Nope. VAT is a domestic tax on all goods and services.

VAT yes, but import tax no. I buy from Amazon UK, which is outside the EU, and as long as soon as the total creeps over 150 quid, I'm hit with import duties, on top of VAT. I just asked my wife who shops at Temu a lot, and she never had to pay import duties (never even came close to the 150 total).

Thinning hair in early 20s, buzz cut till mid 30s, since then full shave. Balancing it out with a goatee. I've been told by people who've known me for a long time that the current style makes me look much younger, but I guess I'm lucky that the shape of my skull works well with a shaven head.

I used Classic Shell to make it look as much as WinXP Classic as possible, so I'm happy with how it looks. As for vulnerabilities, knock on wood, so far I didn't have any issues (but I do run Bitdefender). I use it for gaming (GOG, newest game being older than my PC), photo editing (Gimp with Google Nik Collection), browsing, and office work. Nothing too demanding. But to be honest, I would have switched to Mint a long time ago if I found a Linux alternative for Smart Switch (my phone backup utility) and Garmin Connect for my watch. Those two are the only two pieces of software that keep me with Windows, and at this point I'm actually thinking of a cheap mini PC just for those two as a direct pass-through to my NAS backup.

I work in IT, run Mint on my travel laptop, and yet at home use the desktop I got 10 years ago, still with Win 8.1. And I use my current desktop quite extensively. There's still a lot of perfectly fine hardware with outdated OS floating around, and I'd argue that a significant portion of it is used by people experienced enough that they know what they are doing. Much of that will shift towards Linux. Not most of it, I'll grant you that, but more than people expect.

In fairness, they'd have to pay me to view their article. Not read, mind you, just view. I don't think I could force myself to read their articles even if paid.

I'm personally not sure how it works. But when we were upgrading our bathroom, the tile shop added the VAT to the quoted sale price. I then asked a friend of mine who is VAT-registeted to buy it for us, and he got it from the same warehouse for the non-VAT price.

I agree overall, but VAT is not all that difficult to evade, at least in the service industry. Paying handymen in cash is common in many countries, and that's a means to evade VAT. Hell, even using them to buy the building or landscaping materials for you (being a registered business they purchase for prices without VAT) saves you on most of the tax. Then there's service barter. I did it only once, a long time ago, but it can serve as an example: I did family portraits (photography) for my physio, in exchange for a number of physio sessions. If we charged each other, it would have cost each of us, say, 250 Euros, but we'd only see 200 each, and the state would get 100. So, savings of 50 for each of us.

I've read the books, and I had no intention of going through the pain again, watching the show.

Got me good. Thanks for the laugh.