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I am curious, Grump. If you could buy a guitar from over in Europe or Asia somewhere and get a PRE shipping Pre Import duty price, what would it be? In other words, approximately how much does shipping and importing add to it?
Let's say for example we in the USA can buy an SG Special for $500-$750 used/ new or a Standard for $1500-$1700, how much would be added to get it to you? Not in WON but in USD. I am seeing that $1 = about 1170 Won.
This is an $1800 guitar in the US/Japan. I think you have state taxes there that may alter the price, state by state.
In Euros, it's a bit more expensive due to European VAT.
Because it's going outside Europe, I don't pay EU tax, so the price of the guitar I paid was US$1,484 (I,330 Euros on my invoice). I also paid US$55.76 shipping fee to Korea - Thomann has famously cheap shipping costs. Thusfar I've paid US$1,539 for the guitar which sounds cheap until you add in Korean import tax which is on the total price of item plus shipping.
I don't know how much the import tax will be, top end is 30%, US$461, which would mean the guitar cost me US$2000 - that's what I'm prepared to pay for that guitar, so not cheap...
Korea has a flat rate of 10%, and an added 10-20% on 'luxury goods', plus they recently signed a FTA which shouldn't cover these goods, but you just don't know what taxes will be applied; I am hoping for an Xmas present from Korean customs (yeah, I know, the opposite is more likely...) of low import tax. So that's the maths, the guitar will cost me between US$1500-2000 - time will tell.
As a comparison, I suspect this guitar is fairly similar (no 2018/2019 SG specials made it to Korea) and costs US$1786. I prefer the ltd.ed SG (obviously, or I would have bought that LP special):
