Should I buy in Australia or in the USA?

So I'm looking to get a new laptop and well having been an early Mac user (Mac Classic FTW!) and slightly more recently an iBook (circa 2001 G3) and also deciding that I'd like to try my hand at maybe developing an iPhone App or two I've pretty much decided that it'll be a 13in Mac Book Pro. I don't need anything fancier than the base model so that should do it. Another important factor is that I now have sufficient funds to get back into the Apple world. It still feels odd that I have money after being a money scrounging, penny pinching student for so many years.Whatever you think about Apple the word cheap usually doesn't immediately to mind.

Anyway, as I am heading the states in July I could purchase it over there. So I'm going to compare buying it over there to buying it over here and all the extra savings I can squeeze out of it. Because despite having more funds I still like to use them as little as possible.


So, to start with lets just compare basic prices. I can get it from the Apple Store in the States for US$1199 and I can get it in the Australian Apple Store for AUD$1499. So converting both to AUD (using todays conversion rate of 0.87281 from Oanda I get

US Apple Store AUD$1,373.23 versus AUD$1,499 from the Australian store.

So, looks like a no brainer at the moment, but the US price does not include sales tax, so lets check where I am going.

Sales tax in New York City is

City sales tax rate is 4.5 percent (in addition to the New York State sales and use tax of 4 percent and the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District surcharge of 0.375%), for a total Sales and Use tax of 8.875 percent.

So that'd make it New York City Apple Store = 1,373.23*1.08875 which is AUD$1495.10, suddenly it doesn't look so good there.

Now, sales tax in Washington, DC is 5.75% so in DC we get 1,373.23*1.0575 which is AUD$1452.19. Hmm still not that much better.

What about in Boston? Sales tax is 6.25% so we get AUD$1459.06

Lets dig a little deeper. Here in Australia I can get an Educational Discount which knocks $100 off the price and brings it down to AUD$1,399 which already looks better than the US prices.

Also, in Australia if you're about to travel overseas and you purchase something you can get the GST back via the Tourist Refund Scheme the catch is that you have to take the goods with you to present at the Airport to get the refund. There are other requirements, which you can see on the website linked but they are all met by this purchase anyway. So if you're eligible you can get a refund as follows.

The GST refund is calculated by dividing the total amount of the purchase by 11.

So, if I get the laptop for AUD$1399 and take it in my carry on luggage with me on the trip then I'll get 1399/11 = AUD$127.18 cash back. Which would bring the grand total for purchasing the laptop here in Oz to 1399- 127.18 = 1271.82.

So basically we get

US Purchase = AUD$1452.19

versus

Australian purchase = AUD$1271.82

I know where I'll be getting it.