The insane (seeming) spike in taxes and customs are completely understandable and considered acceptable nowadays in light of the relatively recent findings... Essentially the calculations used to be based on normal taxes and customs and value added taxes and shipping... hrm...think of it like ...the incredibly useful Carbon Credit and tax system that has been implemented ...but on a much more "Quantum-ly Entangled" scale... ...Considering the bleed over from Multiple Parallel Universes... the loss and / or gain from sales in those "Alternates" now must be made up for...so there is a "balancing - out of the books" ...so to speak.. So saying ...the shipping, taxes, vat ...etc...you may already have paid on the device, are paying, or will pay clear into the future after your purchase has been done... Hence the new Abbrev.s everyone may notice in the fine print of much of what is purchased nowadays.. MPUSF (Multiple Parallel Universe Shipping Fees) MPUT(taxes) and MPUVAT The best we can hope for in light of this new method of increasing fees... Is that someone comes up with an UNTE (Universal Nullification Theory Equation) to counter the MPU fees... The downside is ... proving a UNTE to discredit the widely accepted MPU Theory ... may just wink us all out of existence. But at least for a nanosecond we all would enjoy not having to deal with the damn fees.