I know a consultant who calls that region us-tirefire-1.

I and some previous coworkers call it the YOLO region.

The only regions that are more expensive than us-east-1 in the States are GovCloud and us-west-1 (Bay Area). Both us-west-2 (Oregon) and us-east-2 (Ohio) are priced the same as us-east-1.

I would probably go with US-EAST-2 just because it's isolated from anything except perhaps a freak Tornado and better situated on the eastern US. Latency to/from there should be near optimal for most eastern US/Canada population.

One caveat with us-east-2 is that it appears to get new features after us-east-1 and us-west-2. You can view the service support by region here: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regio....

Fair point. It depends on what the project is.

And for those of us in GST/HST/VAT land, hosting in USA saves us some tax expenditures.

How?

At least in EU services bought from overseas are subject to reverse charge, i.e. self-assessment of VAT (Article 196 of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02... ).

Though note that if you are an EU AWS customer, you are not buying from outside EU, you are buying from Amazon's EU branches regardless of AWS region. If Amazon has a local branch in your country, they charge you VAT as any local company does. Otherwise you buy from an Amazon branch in another EU country, and you again need to self-assess VAT (reverse charge) per Article 196.

My experience is with Canadian HST.

Since AWS built a DC in Canada, I’m paying HST on my Route53 expenses, but not on my S3 charges in non-Canadian DCs.

I’m not an HST registrant (small supplier, or if you’re just using services personally), so there’s nothing to self-assess.

Even if self-assessment was required, you get some deferral on paying (unless you have to remit at time of invoice?).

Makes sense.

I believe it works differently in EU (i.e. US DCs taxed) as per Article 44 the place of supply of services is the customer's country if the customer has no establishment in the supplier's country.

AWS is registered for Australian GST - they therefore charge GST on all(ish) services[0].

IBM/Softlayer, Rackspace, Google Cloud, Microsoft and I imagine everyone else large enough to count also does, too.

For Australian businesses, at least, being charged GST isn't a problem - they can claim it as an input and get a tax credit[1].

[0] https://aws.amazon.com/tax-help/australia/

[1] https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/GST/Claiming-GST-credits/

You know, normally you still have to pay that tax - just through a reverse charge process

Not the case in Canada if you’re not an HST registrant (non-business or a small enough business where you’re exempt).

Even if you did have to self-assess, better to pay later than right away.