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I've heard this excuse, that tax situation is too complicated, and never understood it. The store knows to charge me the correct value, including all appropriat
by jgeada 4y ago
I've heard this excuse, that tax situation is too complicated, and never understood it. The store knows to charge me the correct value, including all appropriate taxes, when I come to pay. So the data clearly is there, and therefore choosing not to show it to me up front is indeed bait-and-switch. They're telling me a price that is not going to be what they'll actually charge me.
- b112 4y agoThey aren't charging you sales tax. The governement is, and they force the store into being their tax collector too. It is a very important distinction.
- leesalminen 4y agoAre you advocating requiring user registration with an address and login just to view products on an e-commerce site? I would dislike that far more than just knowing my sales tax rate is X% and to factor that in my head. I’d probably do significantly less online shopping if I had to register to see products.
- wizofaus 4y agoLots of possible solutions to that though, for unregistered users you could have an option to select sales tax % that would default based on location if you let the site access it. How many different sales tax rates actually exist in the US and how often do they change?
- leesalminen 4y agoSure, I agree there are probably some half-useful middle ground solutions. There are thousands of different sales tax rates in the US that change multiple times per year. Each city, county, state and other things like metro transit districts, water districts and school districts can all contribute to the sales tax rate paid by an individual at the point of sale.
- yibg 4y agoThe answer to both is a lot. It’s not just state level but also county, municipal etc levels. Every month there are dozens and dozens of tax rate changes.
- Spooky23 4y agoEveryone seems to manage with that just fine. There are literally hundreds of entities providing that service to merchants.
- yibg 4y agoThat’s not the topic of discussion though. They currently manage it fine because it’s done at point of sale. How would that work if you have to advertise the price including the sales tax?
- vel0city 4y ago> How many different sales tax rates actually exist in the US and how often do they change? Thousands. Every municipality in my area can have their own sales tax and can change them whenever they want. For Texas alone that's ~1,220 potentially different sales taxes which can change at any time. Its not an impossible to keep track of thing though, plenty of organizations do it and most payment processors will essentially handle it for you. But its not exactly easy, aggregating all that and getting it all right in the first place is a good bit of work.
- wizofaus 4y agoSounds crazy but ok!
- jpeizer 4y agoIt’s also a logistics thing. Since we also shop online. Store want online prices to match what’s seen in store and making the two match would be a nightmare and not reasonably viable. On the other hand thing like cars really should have an all inclusive price sticker. They already have an itemized price sticker on the car so there is really nothing stoping these sellers from putting the remaining fees and taxes on there two as that should be consistent with the same dealer location and with such low inventory.
- setr 4y agoGiven that most stores weren’t printing final price pre-internet, I highly doubt this is the reason. Though I do recall some really small convenience stores not getting the memo, but amongst them it isn’t/wasnt common
- jsmith45 4y agoIf displaying post tax prices is not required by law, then it is usually a competitive disadvantage. People will see the post tax price, compare it in their head with the pre-tax price they saw at some other store, and feel like the post tax prices store is more expensive even if this store’s final price is actually slightly lower than the other store’s price.
- s3p 4y agoMaybe. But have you ever considered stores that offer pick up vs. dine in options? In Ohio for instance, pick up orders of food of any kind aren't taxed, but dine-in is. So if you're at a fast food restaurant they can't magically change the prices on the menu to include tax just because they now know you're dining in.