This is more than minor. After not displaying the taxes properly which is already against the law at checkout they aren’t charging the correct VAT including charging 20% in a country with 19% VAT according to the article.

Probability this simply turns into a weeks-long debate (of course, ON Twitter) about whether or not the tax structure is too difficult for even large firms to easily comply with?

Fun thing: there are a few, easy to integrate services that will give you all the information you need to remain compliant. You just need to integrate them in your checkout workflow - and then actually report the taxes and pay, which is the much more onerous part.

Which is solved everywhere, except US, by showing the end price to the customer and eating/calculating the taxes "under the hood".

US companies need to comply with an even more complicated tax structure (due to the existence of state and city taxes). The only difference with the EU is they need to show it in the upfront price, rather than only in the final billed price.

It’s newsworthy! The current story being told in tech is that we can lay off significant parts of the workforce with no impact. Following this, the resulting failures are generally hidden or otherwise non-obvious.

Enough people found it interesting for it to be written about, get published, then get voted to the front page of Hacker News for discussion.

My guess is that it’s largely because there are a lot of mentality subjugated Europeans on HN who make sure the rules of oppression are followed diligently and will work hard to bring any fellow slaves in line, rather than ask themselves why they tolerate their own enslavement.

After all, the rules are what the masters make them and Elon better collect the correct amount of double digit tax and the slaves are going to make sure of that to keep master happy.

They don’t even question the fact that the reason the tax must be included in the price is because the ruling class masters don’t want the slave classes realizing that they are paying a minimum of ~1/5 of the price of any good in taxes … on top of having less money due to lower wages and lower net income due to higher income taxes.

It’s not really good in America either, even though it’s not quite as bad and due to a somewhat different dynamics, but most Americans that actually earn something from working and being productive also pay huge amounts of their earned value in dues to their violent masters, aka taxes.

Maybe don't begin with the assumption that everyone that has a different opinion must be an idiot. And then continue with gathering facts - like the fact that every receipt must by the same law indicate exactly how much VAT is included in the price. Then you might not come to such obviously nonsensical conclusions.

To a European consumer this would be a huge surprise that they could even overlook at checkout, given they are not used to look fir sudden price changes at checkout

Chalk it down to MDS - Musk Derangement Syndrome. There is something in Elon Musk which triggers people to start acting irrationally just like there is something in e.g. Donald Trump which does the same. It is probably related to the way they - Musk and Trump and others like them - act like they are not bound by the laws which keep others from attempting the types of ventures these often undertake as well as their lack of humility about them. Some are awed by their boldness and become fanboys, others are disgusted by their lack of humility and failure to abide by the standards and fall victim to some form of 'derangement syndrome'. When Musk started gaining successes with SpaceX and Tesla there were many articles posted by the 'fanboy' section of the crowd while those who started to suffer from DS were just waiting for him or his companies to trip somewhere, somehow so they could torch the man. His purchase of Twitter as well as the underwhelming performance (compared to the claimed capabilities) of Tesla's 'fully self driving' system have given them ample fuel just waiting for someone to put a match to.