See the image below:

Now, you may notice something… The purchase price of the UK software is, before taxes, £705 while the US software (presumably with taxes) is $999. I’m going to compare our tax free price with the US full price, simply because I can’t assume that the US price includes taxes – I just don’t know the US system that well.
Now if you’re not well up on exchange rates the figures may make the UK copy seem cheaper. But every one of our Great British Pounds will buy 2.03 of your now considerably Cheaper US Dollars.

So let’s work it out.

If bought in the US, the cost without taxes is:

US$999 = GB£492

If bought in the UK, the cost without taxes is:

GB£705 = US$1431

So there we go – we pay over 40% more to download Adobe Software in the UK than in the US. And pity us with our taxes – if you add VAT the price goes up to an equivalent of a whopping $1682. If there were shipping costs, or shop costs to take into account we could understand it. But this is software. It costs the same to deliver wherever the end user is if you’re using the Internet. While there are costs with accounting, they don’t add up to 40% extra.

The US economy isn’t doing that well, but do they really need to rape the wallets of overseas developers in order to improve the situation?

Oh, and I’ll leave it as an exercise to you to spot just how much of a rip-off the upgrade prices are. I wish I had a daughter just so I could forbid her from dating Adobe accountants and marketers.