MicrostockGroup

Is that body only?  In Canada the body is $1399, $100 more than in U.S. and our dollar is about $1.02 - $1.04.  No, not fair.

The difference can be taxes, warranty and size of the market.

I know that in Slovakia (maybe also rest of EU) everything comes with 2 year warranty (so the price should be higher).

And yes, I live in the USA now

EDIT: But I do feel your pain somewhat. But you also have to take into account that this "cheaper in the US" is mostly due to super low $ so people in the US are also making less money than people in Europe.

we have a free trade agreement, so very few taxes here, only GST (goods and services tax) 10%

No tarriffs here in Australia wherever you buy stuff from (there may be still some on motor vehicles some other things, but when Australia went free trade, they really did go free trade!). And Canon stuff is still largely made in Japan.

Transport is part of it - Australia is a small country population wise, but large in terms of size, so distribution networks are expensive to run here - lots of quasi- fixed costs that have to be spread over relatively small sales.
Another part of it is that elasticiyy of demand tends to be less elastic here. In Europe and Australia a large part of the market for digital camera gear - especially the high end stuff - is limited to the pro market, who will pay whatever they need to to get the job done. We don't have the large, wealthy, price aware consumer demand for top end gear that tends to keep the prices down (the differential between US and Australian prices for consumer grade photo gear tneds to be much lower in percentage terms than for L lenses...). Americans seem to be much more price conscious and shop around a lot more. So international companies do exactly what you would expect - they charge a higher price in the markets where they can do so and maintain their profits. If they try to do that in the US they would lose big sales from the consumers who buy pro quality gear. In other words we get ripped off because we still buy the stuff at the high prices...(well that's my theory and I'm sticking to it!)

Another part of the issue is that the fall in the US dollar relative to other currences still isn't really reflected in US prices (or the rise of the Australian currency in Australian prices) yet. Because of the relative volatility of international currrency markets and the sort of hedge deals that many big companies will have in place to stop them being burned by big currency movements it will take some time before price relativities reflect the changes in the exchange rates, if they ever do.

$1450 for the 40D body?  Wanna tell me where, I've got a 40 and a 20D, but I wouldn't mind getting  second 40D at that price, and flick the 20 on...  (I'm in NZ)

For any Scandinavians that find it tempting to buy a camera from US, be prepared to ad 25% VAT when trying to pick up your package - and thats up front or you wont see your camera at all.
Unpleasant surprise to say the least.

//Suvakov

yeah that goes for buying anything from another country online.  You don't pay any tax in the 'net store' but when it gets imported you pay whatever taxes your country has.