[derekgas]

In a nutshell Phil, this is how it works: manufacturer to distributor + vat, distributor to merchant + even more vat, merchant to retailer + a ridiculous amount of vat, result = end user pays everybodies vat, and everybody else can claim some of it back, hence if you go direct to the merchant or online, you pay an inflated price which is somewhere in between what the retailer would buy for and what the merchant can actually sell for!