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Random mutterings
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Recent Chicken Scratchings
These neighboring shops in Pondicherry, India offer a very interesting question … to pay duty or not to pay duty? Which would you go for?
But seriously, anyone have any ideas that could explain these two stores’ differing positions on charging duty?
Posted 11 Mar 2010
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4 Responses to “Who wants to pay duty?”
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Pondi is one of my favorite cities in India. Are these shops near the coast? The beach is awesome there.
The post is hilarious. I would go with duty free. Perhaps the Duty Paid Shop is just a front to drive more people to the Duty Free Shop. Did you go into both?
I wonder if both shops do not charge duty, but the Duty Paid Shop wants you to think they are more generous than the Duty Free Shop by implying they (the Duty Paid Shop) paid the duty for you out of their own pocket, as opposed to simply not charging duty?
ps – duty is a funny word.
Maybe the “Duty Free Shop” is free of duty, and the “Duty Paid Shop” has duty that is already paid.
My guess is that the duty free shop is for tourists. I’d like to see what they require to allow you to shop there. A foreign passport? A ticket out of the country?
I do know that, in Europe, a lot of countries allow tourists to apply for refunds of Value Added Tax paid on purchases made there, but most tourists don’t know about this and probably don’t pay enough VAT for it to be worth the effort.