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Disagree. Bait and switch is one symptom of the issue that the price is not what you'll pay. Which to be clear is awful. And that matters if you have to be car
by guitarbill 3y ago
Disagree. Bait and switch is one symptom of the issue that the price is not what you'll pay. Which to be clear is awful.
And that matters if you have to be careful about spending. Also, "everyone knows about them", really? If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them?
See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping. If you give them 5 <amount of currency>, and the item they want is less than 5, or they want five of something that is 1, they can buy it.
- seer 3y agoI really like how tips are done in most of europe, where the tip is included by default in the restaurant price. So now your choices are - add additional tip if you’re really satisfied with your service, or retract the default tip if you’ve been wronged in some way. Just by default you don’t have to think about it, and it shows up in all the places if should - government included.
- SSchick 3y agoI grew up in Germany and never heard about 'retracting' the default tip. The only way I can imagine this is severe complaining to the point where they take something off the bill which I've only ever seen once or twice, where as in the US this is a frequent thing.
- autoexec 3y ago> the tip is included by default in the restaurant price. So now your choices are - add additional tip if you’re really satisfied with your service, or retract the default tip if you’ve been wronged in some way. What's the default tip, that is to say, what's the max you are allowed to retract? Is it the same everywhere or does the default vary by restaurant? I could see the appeal to laziness resulting in more consistent tipping, but also lower tips for exceptional/attractive/flirty waitstaff. Ultimately, I'd much rather do away with tipping entirely. I grew up never questioning it until I spent some time in places where tipping just wasn't a thing, and I've resented it ever since.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoIn the UK there's no tip included by default. Wages of workers is included, just like the other overheads are. If you want to give a gift to someone -- a tip -- how could that possibly be even known in advance.
- Simulacra 3y agoAs it should be. Businesses should pay a living wage, and tips should only be absolutely voluntary, and without incitement.
- lmm 3y agoA lot of restaurants in the UK will add a "service charge" which is supposed to be a suggested tip, and you can ask for it to be removed from the bill (and then tip separately, or not).
- ryanwaggoner 3y agoI’ve traveled all over Europe and lived in Italy for several years and I’ve never heard of this.
- brewdad 3y agoI think they mean retracting a “service charge” rather than trying to get away with paying 9 units for a 10 unit item. I’m sure you could have the service charge removed but the service would have to be awful for me to attempt it.
- Agingcoder 3y agoNo there’s no tip in most of Europe. There’s a service charge which can’t be retracted, it’s part of the price.
- orangepurple 3y agoEuropean culture changes drastically every 100 km. Please be more specific.
- briffle 3y agoYou can do that in Oregon as well. No sales tax
- guitarbill 3y agoOnly the state sales tax is 0%, local sales tax doesn't have to be. So YMMV, which is kinda the whole point - that it shouldn't.
- kelnos 3y agoI always find it weird that people (usually non-Americans) get so worked up about how US prices generally exclude taxes. I agree that it would be better and clearer if listed prices were tax-included. But they're usually not in the US. That's just how it is. Chill out, get over it, it's really not that big a deal. This particular new law is not attempting to address that. Maybe it should. But maybe doing so would be biting off too much, and its sponsors believe it would never pass if they tried that. The purpose of this law is much less ambitious, but that's fine. Incremental improvements are better than no improvements. I am pleased that now hotels can't spring daily "resort fees" on guests after they show up for their reservation. That sort of thing. If you live in the United States, you know that a) listed prices rarely include tax, and b) for an annoyingly large number of things, you will be expected to add a tip. If you live here and don't know that, you are not particularly well-equipped to operate in the real world, and you should learn. If you don't live here but are visiting, it's unfortunate that you might not know about these quirks of American capitalism, but the law is not really aimed at you. Sorry, but our quality-of-life laws are tailored to people who live here first and foremost. > If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them? It's not about being easy. It's about stupid psychological effects. If I list my price tax-inclusive, and my competitor lists theirs without the tax (but ultimately will charge the same price as I will), my competitor will get more business than I will. It's dumb, but that's human psychology for you. > See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping. Young kids can shop here just as well. They just have an extra step to learn. They deal with it just fine; kids are smart and adaptable.
- irjustin 3y ago> Bait and switch is one symptom of the issue that the price is not what you'll pay. Disagreed as well. With Taxes, literally 100% of all items have the same convention that is not "bait and switch".
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoLike I said, you can have a debate about how taxes are displayed on a price list. I respectfully disagree on solely including them in the price and making them "hidden". Calling them out is a good reminder of exactly how much you are paying for government services. For example, the one common tax in the US that is hidden in the price is tax on gasoline. I think it would be better to specifically call this out, especially since gas taxes can vary so much by jurisdiction. I mean, pretty much all adults where I live know our sales tax rate is 8.25%, but I have actually no clue what my per-gallon tax on gas is.
- boxed 3y agoStockholm syndrome talking. Displaying THE PRICE on products is so amazingly basic that it's always mind blowing seeing Americans think this is a complicated question. It's not. If I have to pay 5 dollars at checkout THEN THE PRICE IS FIVE DOLLARS.
- ffgjgf1 3y agoIt might be somewhat complicated when every town has a different tax rate.
- Jensson 3y agoThe store is just in a single town, it is trivial for them to fix their labels. For the user on the other hand it isn't trivial to figure out the tax rate for every store they visit as they travel since as you admit it changes everywhere.
- devilbunny 3y agoFor a big corp, they want to advertise nationally. "$1 hamburgers!" or "$799 refrigerator!". You can't make a national ad if you have to have precise pricing. Not the strongest argument, but there it is. A college friend worked at a pizza place that straddled a county line. One county had its own sales tax; the other did not. The register was in the back of the store to take advantage of this (the location of the register was considered the point of sale for tax purposes). Question: would it have been legal for them to advertise a price in the higher-tax-county part of the store that only applied if you bought the pizza from the outher county? Local sales tax and national VAT are similar, but they don't work that much alike in practice.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> if it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them? We know them generally enough to get by. That doesn’t mean calculating them precisely is a peach. There have been stores that tried to differentiate on the basis of all-in pricing. It fails. Unless you’re paying cash or precisely monitoring spending, it doesn’t matter. (There is also a transparency argument in knowing how much is going to the business versus state.) In summary, it’s not an issue for most Americans. (When I travel in Europe, having all-in prices doesn’t even remotely occur as a perk.) And there are ideological reasons that resonate with many Americans that are against it. Nobody to fight for it, a vocal minority against; seems like a silly hill to die on.
- pandaman 3y ago>If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them? Because you pay the tax from the total of your purchase and not from each item separately. E.g. in Santa Monica, CA sales tax is 10.25%, a price on a $4.95 item with tax included would be $5.46 but on 10x of these items it's just $54.58.
- frumper 3y agoRetailers can charge whatever they’d like. Retailers are paying the tax, they’re just allowed to add it to the bill, but they don’t have to. They can calculate it per item, round up a penny and that’s the price.
- pandaman 3y agoIndeed they can, that's not the question I've answered though.
- oehpr 3y ago.... And this is why we don't just add it to the price? This is the grand reason? Wouldn't it be far better to establish a rock solid precedent that the price there is the price you pay? Every exception that remains is an opportunity for weasels to justify why they are also the very important exception to the rule. You sure that's worth a rounding error?
- pandaman 3y ago>And this is why we don't just add it to the price? This is the grand reason? I don't think so, there are more apparent reasons listed in this thread already. I am just pointing that rolling a sales tax into price is not as simple as some imagine. I imagine VAT is accounted differently so it could be rolled into the price without this kind of error but I've never dealt with VAT so I can only speculate. >Wouldn't it be far better to establish a rock solid precedent that the price there is the price you pay? For whom? I don't see how it would be better for me but as somebody else noticed, the retailers are free to roll the tax into the price, the fact that they don't do this might be a pretty solid indication that it's not better?
- tzs 3y ago> See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping. If you give them 5 <amount of currency>, and the item they want is less than 5, or they want five of something that is 1, they can buy it. In the US even young kids can go shopping too. If you give them $5 + <tax on $5>. They can then buy any item whose price tag says $5 or less or 5 of any $1 item.
- parineum 3y agoWhat's the tax on $5?
- tzs 3y agoDepends on your location. If you are somewhere with a 5% sales tax for example, it would be $0.25. If you don't want to have to know the sales tax for your location, I believe the highest sales tax in the US is under 11% so just give the kid $5.55.
- Twirrim 3y agoWhat's the tax on the individual items in question, also, because it's all variable based on what you're buying, what city you're in etc. Pretty much everywhere else I've travelled in the world, the price on the shelf is the price you pay, even when tax changes based on what something is classified as (to whit that fun legal case of "is a jaffa cake a cake or a biscuit"). For some absolutely bizarre self-hating reason, the US has decided that, no, your experience should be "Oh wait, now I've got to go and add some seemingly random sales tax that I can't likely predict in advance, and won't know until I've rung everything up".
- tzs 3y ago> What's the tax on the individual items in question, also, because it's all variable based on what you're buying, what city you're in etc. You're overlooking the context. Someone said it was easy to let young children go shopping in places where taxes are included in the sticker price because you can give the kid $5 and the kid knows they can buy any item with a sticker price that does not exceed that or a combination of cheaper items whose sticker prices do not sum to more than 5$. The implication was that this is harder for young children in the US, presumably because young children won't be able to do the complicated mathematical finagling that the rest of the world apparently thinks Americans do every time they go to the store. My point is that in the US you just give the child $5 plus enough to cover tax, and then the child can use exactly the same approach those kids elsewhere use: if sum of sticker prices <= $5 they have enough money.
- refurb 3y agoIt’s not that hard. Europeans act like it’s impossible to calculate taxes in your head. If the sales tax is 9.25%, round up to 10%, so $1 on every hundred. I walk into a store and buy something for $7.32. Ok, I know in my head the tax is about $0.70, so cool, it’s be “about” $8. That’s all I need to know. I don’t carry rolls of Pennie’s around so I’m not worried about the cents. He’ll, when was the last time you paid in cash? It’s the same with Fahrenheit or miles. It’s a simple calculation, not a massive obstacle that holds Americans back from daily living or technological advances.
- zestyping 3y agoYour estimate is "about $8" but 7.32 + 0.70 is 8.02, which you can't pay for with $8. Your example is actually a great illustration of why expecting people to calculate taxes in their head doesn't work. If you are trying to buy a product priced at $7.32, you can't easily tell whether $8 is enough. No one should have to multiply 9.25 by 7.32 in their head to know whether they can buy something. Enough with this insanity. If the price is $8, then $8 should be enough!