As a European I’ll never cease to find it mind blowing that it is normal for a Americans that the cost to them of damn near everything is more than the cost initially shown to them.
You’re completely right to feel that way. As an American, it’s mind blowing to me, too. I really don’t like the fact that “hidden fees” have become normal.
The tax drives me crazy. The excuse for not displaying the total price after tax is because it’s different for each state. …yet the cash register seems to be able to handle that perfectly fine. So it can’t that hard to figure it out.
Edit: after a quick look into it, the main problem is tax in a lot of places is based on the Total amount sold, not on each item. So that could definitely be impossible to display before hand.
after a quick look into it, the main problem is tax in a lot of places is based on the Total amount sold, not on each item.
I’m actually confused, aren’t taxes a percentage? The sum of a percentage of all items should be the same as a percentage of the sum, no? Or is my brain not do math good? Can someone smarter than me explain?
The sum of a percentage of all items should be the same as a percentage of the sum, no?
Suppose you buy two items costing x and y, and there’s a constant sales tax of t (say 10%, or 0.1). You’d pay t * x + t * y, or t * (x + y). You can even generalize this to Σ(t * x) = t * Σx (for x ∈ X, where X is the set of prices you’re paying).
I think the issue they were bringing up though is that tax is not applied equally to all items, and that tax may be determined by number of items sold. I don’t actually know if this is true or not, but if it is, the distributive property doesn’t apply anymore. Edit: I re-read the comment, that doesn’t look like what they were saying actually. Either way, if tax is weird like this, distributive property may not apply anymore.
Say you list a table lamp on your website at $100, tax included. Well, if you sell that table lamp to a buyer in Connecticut (where the tax rate is a flat 6.35%) then you’re required to remit $6.35 in sales tax to the state of Connecticut on that transaction.
But if you sell the same table lamp to a buyer in Aberdeen, Washington, where the sales tax rate is 9.08%, then you’d be required to remit $9.08 in sales tax to the state of Washington.
As you can see, you are cutting into your profit margin by including tax in your pricing.
Further, US customers are accustomed to paying their local sales tax rates. We’re so accustomed to paying odd amounts in sales tax that paying a flat rate might surprise us or leave us a little confused.
This is anti-consumer bullshit nonsense. All they did was hid their only real “con” behind a wall of text. “As you can see, you are cutting into your profit margin by including sales tax”
And the last paragraph is fucking stupid too. People are too used to seeing numbers, so other numbers will confuse them!
I’m not aware of anywhere in the US where the tax is variable depending on total amount sold. Sometimes some things are excluded from sales tax. But that’s per-item and not variable.
In the vast majority of the US there’s no reason they can’t just display the price with tax.
Granted, prices on consumer items are so fucking out of control retailers and etc just charge whatever the fuck they want and people are expected to pay it. They’re gouging at 80%, 100%, 150% markups on food, clothing, services, etc versus 2 years ago and people seem to just accept it (tough not to when everyone is doing it)
Initially they got away with it because “COVID supply problems”, which was frequently a lie or exaggeration. Now there’s no excuse given typically; people quote “inflation” but that’s a tiny fraction of it. It’s just gouging companies have learned they can keep getting away with more and more.
Check out the article linked below. I’m interested in what you think after that. Especially with the states that forbid including tax in displayed prices (and why they don’t).
In Ontario Canada there is no provincial tax component on meals costing less than $4. This dates from the time you could get a simple lunch for < $4. Unfortunately it’s never been adjusted for inflation.
No reason not to show amount with tax and give people a pleasant surprise though
When I make price signs at work I make sure the price shows taxes and bottle deposits. I think my store is the only one to do that. I manage a liquor store
Tax in almost every single place I’ve ever been to in the United States is not nearly so complicated. State tax, occasional city/county tax, seldom restaurant tax are nearly always flat rates. It wouldn’t be difficult to incorporate those taxes applied for each individual item to their prices at all. Most places choose not to because it inflates the price on menus and price tags, and most people assume tax is not included in these prices.
The initial shock of charging more could convince patrons to go elsewhere if it’s not perfectly clear tax is included in the price.
Could your local Safeway put tax-inclusive prices in the circular? Sure, although there are actually laws that prohibit such local pricing (YMMV; I’ve lived in a lot of states) specifically so that people in the sticks aren’t shouldering the entire transportation bill to their IGA. This is why grocery circulars are regional, but that’s an aside. Still, different cities in the region will have different tax rates, so they can’t do tax-inclusive, and they certainly can’t have a different price on the shelf than in the circular, and here we are.
But these are small potatoes.
Now, can Tim Cook release a new iPhone and list the price in every municipality in the U.S. in the keynote? The patchwork of devolved taxing authority makes the U.S. a poor candidate for tax-inclusive pricing.
States universally abandoning income tax for VAT (ain’t never gonna happen, since VAT inconveniently hits even billionaires’ consumption [and even less likely would be pushing through VAT while retaining income tax]) could get things closer to what Europeans have come to expect, where each state would have a universal rate and consistently applied carveouts and then distribute that to lower tiers of government as some states currently do with sales tax, but the closest advertising could get to that would be “state VAT excluded,” at which point nothing has been fixed in terms of walking out the door paying the advertised price at the cost of unpopular economic upheaval.
That’s still my favorite EU legislation. The price that is displayed must be equal (or higher, discounts are still allowed) to the price that you pay. Taxes, tips, fees, everything must be included in the price.
I get the “but different states sales taxes thing”, for national advert. However even then, just make them present example price
Get the new Moborola Bazer, only 549 dollars*
* price example for Buffalo new York, including taxes and fees
Since if one is going with “well the final price you pay might not be what was advertised”, make it be more representative and real. Yeah the final price might be different sometimes even lower depending on your local taxes compared to the example prices calculation locations taxes.
Local advertising or on the shelf prices? There is no excuse, you are selling in that location. You know what the taxes and fees are just add them in. Any rare special discount and discrepancy cases, well the people eligible for those know to expect the difference.
It’s why the “Oh the Free Market will sort itself out” is such a bullshit claim.
My five year old who just got shot at the fifth school shooting this month is just gonna have to buckle down and be patient while I compare quality of service and cost of… the one hospital in town and… that one in the next county ever.
It’s funny because I’ve literally never seen a single person genuinely make that claim. Just people being mad about theoretical people making that claim. I’m sure they exist, they must with how many people claim to know someone that said it, but that line of logic doesn’t seem to be as common as people make it seem.
And on the free market isnt sorting itself out - the claim is usually that the gubment is still not letting the market be free enough. That’s usually the claim, for example, from all the right-wingers I know for when they get cornered on why health care costs are 1000% ridiculous.
Republicans: “Free market!”
Also republicans: “Buy American” “we need to ban Chinese companies from importing and selling goods in the u.s.”
“Outsourcing labor is just smart business”
Stores can show out the door pricing of most products, they just won’t. It’s fairly common in the cannabis space because they don’t want to make change.
Variable taxes based on region. The rates don’t change within a single store, which is where all of the labels are printed. Just print the label with the tax added.
Right. Same excuse as the cable companies. They can clearly calculate the price easily when you get the bill. They can just as easily calculate it when showing you how much it costs.
It’s actually only a few things. The vast majority of the goods we purchase are clearly priced. Most states (and some local jurisdictions like big cities) do have sales tax applied to purchases of non-essential goods, but those rates are generally much lower than the national sales taxes in most European countries.
Sales tax is the most obvious example of adding to the cost I’ve been shown, but it’s everything. Here if there is a price on something that is the price you pay. Period.
If I have €5 and the price on the shelf is €4.90 we are all good, and I don’t even need to know what country I’m in!
But is is more than that, if I take my car in to be fixed, they have to agree every cost they want to charge me in advance at no point can anything cost me more than I expected and agreed to up front.
Airline tickets, theatre tickets, hospital bills, TV ads, you name it, the price they state or advertise is what I pay, no ifs-no buts.
If I have €5 and the price on the shelf is €4.90 we are all good, and I don’t even need to know what country I’m in!
Great in theory, but then you get charged 25 cents at checkout for a bottle deposit. Sure, you can claim if back later, but that price sure as hell isn’t listed on the shelves! You just need to read the tiny little label to see how much you’ll be charged extra. Oh, and don’t forget to return the bottles in the same country before you come back from holiday, because you as hell can’t return it in another country!
VAT makes things easier but that doesn’t mean there are no hidden fees anywhere. There just aren’t that many of them.
I’m seeing it more and more. Little “processing fees” here and there, some tied to COVID, some tied to credit cards. There needs to be a clap-back against this behavior.
The number of places trying to suddenly add or expect an 18% tip or something infuriates me.
Like, why the fuck are you making me suddenly opt out of an 18% tip, Subway? What the fuck would that be for? And after your prices have gone up like 50% in 3 years already??
And I’m sure a bunch of morons pay it, which is why more and more places are pushing it.
How about a “convenience fee” for making an online payment. Why should I pay a fee to make the transaction more convenient for the company who no longer has to pay an employee to take the payment in person?
It’s not about having a sales tax applied to some or all goods or about how much that’d be. It’s about not listing the final price including the tax right until you’re supposed to pay for it. How dumb is that?
I love oregon, no sales tax so the listed price is the price. Now all these idiots moved here and are making changes as to why this place was nice. Like trying to implement a sales tax and getting rid of the urban growth boundary
Now we have to pump our own gas, it was nice having someone do it for ya… if they add a sales tax and create urban sprawl like LA or Phoenix I’ll loose my mind…
Just responded above about the downside of all income being taxed at far higher rates than sales tax. That said, my god the amount of ink we spilled on the Ashland UGB.
My college roommate was from Washougal. He taught me the even finer art of retaining all deposit items in Seattle for my next visit, at which time I’d pop over the 5 bridge first and then show up with an empty car.
Which, in the case of Oregon, means income tax rivaling federal, and you’re paying that on rent. The money always comes from somewhere, and I despised it far more than I worried about coming up with $1.07 for a 99-cent burger.
Yeah, I don’t have a problem with sales tax either (on non essential goods). I do have a problem with it not being included in the price shown on the product.
As a European I’ll never cease to find it mind blowing that it is normal for a Americans that the cost to them of damn near everything is more than the cost initially shown to them.
You’re completely right to feel that way. As an American, it’s mind blowing to me, too. I really don’t like the fact that “hidden fees” have become normal.
Traveling in the US it can often feel like everyone wants to scam you or take advantage of you if you don’t pay attention.
Heck, even store prices and restaurant prices aren’t the real price.
Store prices are without sales tax/VAT, and restaurants wants you to tip 20% so they can keep not paying their “employees”.
The tax drives me crazy. The excuse for not displaying the total price after tax is because it’s different for each state. …yet the cash register seems to be able to handle that perfectly fine. So it can’t that hard to figure it out.
Edit: after a quick look into it, the main problem is tax in a lot of places is based on the Total amount sold, not on each item. So that could definitely be impossible to display before hand.
I’m actually confused, aren’t taxes a percentage? The sum of a percentage of all items should be the same as a percentage of the sum, no? Or is my brain not do math good? Can someone smarter than me explain?
Suppose you buy two items costing
xandy, and there’s a constant sales tax oft(say 10%, or 0.1). You’d payt * x + t * y, ort * (x + y). You can even generalize this toΣ(t * x) = t * Σx(forx ∈ X, whereXis the set of prices you’re paying).In other words, yes.
In case you want the math name for this property, it’s the distributive property.
I think the issue they were bringing up though is that tax is not applied equally to all items, and that tax may be determined by number of items sold. I don’t actually know if this is true or not, but if it is, the distributive property doesn’t apply anymore.Edit: I re-read the comment, that doesn’t look like what they were saying actually. Either way, if tax is weird like this, distributive property may not apply anymore.Hopefully someone can. Me no math good either.
!SeaJ@Lemm.ee shared this:
https://www.taxjar.com/blog/retail/can-retailer-include-sales-tax-in-the-price
This is anti-consumer bullshit nonsense. All they did was hid their only real “con” behind a wall of text. “As you can see, you are cutting into your profit margin by including sales tax”
And the last paragraph is fucking stupid too. People are too used to seeing numbers, so other numbers will confuse them!
Last paragraph feels like marketing language for “it’s free real estate”
100% agree
I’m not aware of anywhere in the US where the tax is variable depending on total amount sold. Sometimes some things are excluded from sales tax. But that’s per-item and not variable.
In the vast majority of the US there’s no reason they can’t just display the price with tax.
Granted, prices on consumer items are so fucking out of control retailers and etc just charge whatever the fuck they want and people are expected to pay it. They’re gouging at 80%, 100%, 150% markups on food, clothing, services, etc versus 2 years ago and people seem to just accept it (tough not to when everyone is doing it)
Initially they got away with it because “COVID supply problems”, which was frequently a lie or exaggeration. Now there’s no excuse given typically; people quote “inflation” but that’s a tiny fraction of it. It’s just gouging companies have learned they can keep getting away with more and more.
Check out the article linked below. I’m interested in what you think after that. Especially with the states that forbid including tax in displayed prices (and why they don’t).
I didn’t know about that until I just read it.
In Ontario Canada there is no provincial tax component on meals costing less than $4. This dates from the time you could get a simple lunch for < $4. Unfortunately it’s never been adjusted for inflation.
No reason not to show amount with tax and give people a pleasant surprise though
When I make price signs at work I make sure the price shows taxes and bottle deposits. I think my store is the only one to do that. I manage a liquor store
You’re a hero. I hope your customers notice what your doing for them.
Tax in almost every single place I’ve ever been to in the United States is not nearly so complicated. State tax, occasional city/county tax, seldom restaurant tax are nearly always flat rates. It wouldn’t be difficult to incorporate those taxes applied for each individual item to their prices at all. Most places choose not to because it inflates the price on menus and price tags, and most people assume tax is not included in these prices.
The initial shock of charging more could convince patrons to go elsewhere if it’s not perfectly clear tax is included in the price.
The problem is at the advertising level.
Could your local Safeway put tax-inclusive prices in the circular? Sure, although there are actually laws that prohibit such local pricing (YMMV; I’ve lived in a lot of states) specifically so that people in the sticks aren’t shouldering the entire transportation bill to their IGA. This is why grocery circulars are regional, but that’s an aside. Still, different cities in the region will have different tax rates, so they can’t do tax-inclusive, and they certainly can’t have a different price on the shelf than in the circular, and here we are.
But these are small potatoes.
Now, can Tim Cook release a new iPhone and list the price in every municipality in the U.S. in the keynote? The patchwork of devolved taxing authority makes the U.S. a poor candidate for tax-inclusive pricing.
States universally abandoning income tax for VAT (ain’t never gonna happen, since VAT inconveniently hits even billionaires’ consumption [and even less likely would be pushing through VAT while retaining income tax]) could get things closer to what Europeans have come to expect, where each state would have a universal rate and consistently applied carveouts and then distribute that to lower tiers of government as some states currently do with sales tax, but the closest advertising could get to that would be “state VAT excluded,” at which point nothing has been fixed in terms of walking out the door paying the advertised price at the cost of unpopular economic upheaval.
And that’s why I am a misanthrope… hard to love humanity when they’re penalized for not being out to get you
That’s still my favorite EU legislation. The price that is displayed must be equal (or higher, discounts are still allowed) to the price that you pay. Taxes, tips, fees, everything must be included in the price.
I get the “but different states sales taxes thing”, for national advert. However even then, just make them present example price
Since if one is going with “well the final price you pay might not be what was advertised”, make it be more representative and real. Yeah the final price might be different sometimes even lower depending on your local taxes compared to the example prices calculation locations taxes.
Local advertising or on the shelf prices? There is no excuse, you are selling in that location. You know what the taxes and fees are just add them in. Any rare special discount and discrepancy cases, well the people eligible for those know to expect the difference.
Some things we have to buy without know the cost, hospital/doctor fees, insurance can surprise you, etc.
It’s why the “Oh the Free Market will sort itself out” is such a bullshit claim.
My five year old who just got shot at the fifth school shooting this month is just gonna have to buckle down and be patient while I compare quality of service and cost of… the one hospital in town and… that one in the next county ever.
/s
It’s funny because I’ve literally never seen a single person genuinely make that claim. Just people being mad about theoretical people making that claim. I’m sure they exist, they must with how many people claim to know someone that said it, but that line of logic doesn’t seem to be as common as people make it seem.
I have run into many people making that claim.
Online, offline, politicians, etc.
And on the free market isnt sorting itself out - the claim is usually that the gubment is still not letting the market be free enough. That’s usually the claim, for example, from all the right-wingers I know for when they get cornered on why health care costs are 1000% ridiculous.
It’s like the national anthem. It’s drilled into our heads since birth, but no one actually knows it.
I mean, if you perform it enough times, you tend to retain it. But then, I have some Carmina Burana and Palestrina memorized for the same reason.
9 years I had to sing it. I don’t remember it past The first two lines. But I like to block things like that out in my head.
Republicans: “Free market!” Also republicans: “Buy American” “we need to ban Chinese companies from importing and selling goods in the u.s.” “Outsourcing labor is just smart business”
It’s government mandated. We have variable sales taxes on every product. And it isn’t included in the ‘price’.
Stores can show out the door pricing of most products, they just won’t. It’s fairly common in the cannabis space because they don’t want to make change.
Depends on the state.
https://www.taxjar.com/blog/retail/can-retailer-include-sales-tax-in-the-price
Nice!
Variable taxes based on region. The rates don’t change within a single store, which is where all of the labels are printed. Just print the label with the tax added.
Right. Same excuse as the cable companies. They can clearly calculate the price easily when you get the bill. They can just as easily calculate it when showing you how much it costs.
That or they can just eat the very minor cost difference in each region
No it isn’t. But companies are certainly trying to make it so.
It’s actually only a few things. The vast majority of the goods we purchase are clearly priced. Most states (and some local jurisdictions like big cities) do have sales tax applied to purchases of non-essential goods, but those rates are generally much lower than the national sales taxes in most European countries.
Sales tax is the most obvious example of adding to the cost I’ve been shown, but it’s everything. Here if there is a price on something that is the price you pay. Period.
If I have €5 and the price on the shelf is €4.90 we are all good, and I don’t even need to know what country I’m in!
But is is more than that, if I take my car in to be fixed, they have to agree every cost they want to charge me in advance at no point can anything cost me more than I expected and agreed to up front.
Airline tickets, theatre tickets, hospital bills, TV ads, you name it, the price they state or advertise is what I pay, no ifs-no buts.
Bragging <.< Trying to make us all jelly.
Or jam, or marmite, or whatever bread-spread-stuff.
I think they spread tea on crumpets or something
Last I heard it was beans on tea. Or was it bread on beans, I can’t remember.
Idk. But I think if you say crumpets three times fast they break away from your continent.
Great in theory, but then you get charged 25 cents at checkout for a bottle deposit. Sure, you can claim if back later, but that price sure as hell isn’t listed on the shelves! You just need to read the tiny little label to see how much you’ll be charged extra. Oh, and don’t forget to return the bottles in the same country before you come back from holiday, because you as hell can’t return it in another country!
VAT makes things easier but that doesn’t mean there are no hidden fees anywhere. There just aren’t that many of them.
I wish.
I’m seeing it more and more. Little “processing fees” here and there, some tied to COVID, some tied to credit cards. There needs to be a clap-back against this behavior.
The number of places trying to suddenly add or expect an 18% tip or something infuriates me.
Like, why the fuck are you making me suddenly opt out of an 18% tip, Subway? What the fuck would that be for? And after your prices have gone up like 50% in 3 years already??
And I’m sure a bunch of morons pay it, which is why more and more places are pushing it.
How about a “convenience fee” for making an online payment. Why should I pay a fee to make the transaction more convenient for the company who no longer has to pay an employee to take the payment in person?
It’s not about having a sales tax applied to some or all goods or about how much that’d be. It’s about not listing the final price including the tax right until you’re supposed to pay for it. How dumb is that?
I love oregon, no sales tax so the listed price is the price. Now all these idiots moved here and are making changes as to why this place was nice. Like trying to implement a sales tax and getting rid of the urban growth boundary
Now we have to pump our own gas, it was nice having someone do it for ya… if they add a sales tax and create urban sprawl like LA or Phoenix I’ll loose my mind…
Just responded above about the downside of all income being taxed at far higher rates than sales tax. That said, my god the amount of ink we spilled on the Ashland UGB.
That’s why you live in Vancouver and shop in Portland! No income tax or sales tax!
My college roommate was from Washougal. He taught me the even finer art of retaining all deposit items in Seattle for my next visit, at which time I’d pop over the 5 bridge first and then show up with an empty car.
It’s actually almost everything unless you live in one of the 4 States without sales tax.
Which, in the case of Oregon, means income tax rivaling federal, and you’re paying that on rent. The money always comes from somewhere, and I despised it far more than I worried about coming up with $1.07 for a 99-cent burger.
Yeah, I don’t have a problem with sales tax either (on non essential goods). I do have a problem with it not being included in the price shown on the product.