When you travel internationally, you get the opportunity to buy stuff “duty free”.

The idea behind it is to remove all the hidden taxes you pay when buying stuff within a country, since other less taxed countries probably sell stuff much cheaper.

Seeing that hidden taxes can approach 50% of the retail purchase price, this should result in a huge saving.

Unfortunately it takes only one look at “duty free” prices to shatter the mystical duty free dream like a steel capped boot to the testicles can shatter a man’s child producing capabilities.

A litre of Kahlua, for example, costs $29.95 “duty free”. What the fuck is that? I can get 700ml for $24.95 retail. The “duty free” saving is only a few dollars.

According to the ATO alcohol excise duty webpage, the excise on liqueur is $61.71 per litre of alcohol. Kahlua is 26.5% alcohol, which means in a 700mL bottle there is 185.5mL of alcohol. This means that the excise on a 700mL bottle is $11.44. So you should save around that much at duty free.

Where’s the difference gone? If all the hidden taxes that “duty free” supposedly removes are actually removed, then it means someone has increased the mark up and reaps all the profit themselves.

Don’t be fooled: you are not saving much with “duty free”, only redistributing the mark up to someone other than a vampiric government.

Duty free is a joke.