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I feel like the US left itself exposed to this kind of crap by not including taxes on advertised prices. I know the logic behind it (so you know how much tax yo

I feel like the US left itself exposed to this kind of crap by not including taxes on advertised prices. I know the logic behind it (so you know how much tax you’re paying) but the reality is that it’s just irritating and established in people’s heads that you’re never going to pay the price you see on the label. Having grown up in Europe where tax is included on the label I still knew I was paying VAT and I knew the percentage amount of it, everyone did. If I picked up a €5 item and was charged anything other than €5 at the checkout I’d know something fishy was going on. But in the US it’s always been easy to tack on a little 20c fee here, a 50c one there… this is just the inevitable escalation where apps like Uber Eats bundle together $12 of “taxes and fees” to mask their obscene cut.

piva00 3y ago
From my experience around the US it's not only taxes, it is taxes, "service fees", tipping, some other junk fee with another name that is not "service fee", so on and so forth. You check out from a hotel not knowing what kind of fee they will be adding, you go into a restaurant not knowing how much the food will actually cost. Figures for prices don't mean anything until you are on the process of paying and figure out all the extras that will be added after the fact. Worse as a non-local since you aren't accustomed to all the ways a service can charge you extras to be prepared for it. It's absolutely irritating, almost everything feels like a bait and switch.
- nojvek 2y ago
  Biden could make it a law to show final price. But it's hard to get through senate and congress. The other part is even if they make it a law, the courts are backlogged for years. US corporations are pretty good at breaking laws and making it a cost of doing business.
floor2 3y ago
> I know the logic behind it (so you know how much tax you’re paying) I always understood it to be the opposite- so that the varying price for the same thing by location was hidden from consumers. A nationwide chain can advertise that a product is $X, even though their customers will pay anywhere from zero additional tax (Alaska, Delaware) to over 11% additional tax (California, Arizona, Illinois). See https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates.html https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates.html for how widely it can range by location.

piva00 3y ago

From my experience around the US it's not only taxes, it is taxes, "service fees", tipping, some other junk fee with another name that is not "service fee", so on and so forth. You check out from a hotel not knowing what kind of fee they will be adding, you go into a restaurant not knowing how much the food will actually cost. Figures for prices don't mean anything until you are on the process of paying and figure out all the extras that will be added after the fact. Worse as a non-local since you aren't accustomed to all the ways a service can charge you extras to be prepared for it. It's absolutely irritating, almost everything feels like a bait and switch.

nojvek 2y ago
Biden could make it a law to show final price. But it's hard to get through senate and congress. The other part is even if they make it a law, the courts are backlogged for years. US corporations are pretty good at breaking laws and making it a cost of doing business.

floor2 3y ago

> I know the logic behind it (so you know how much tax you’re paying) I always understood it to be the opposite- so that the varying price for the same thing by location was hidden from consumers. A nationwide chain can advertise that a product is $X, even though their customers will pay anywhere from zero additional tax (Alaska, Delaware) to over 11% additional tax (California, Arizona, Illinois). See https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates.html https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates.html for how widely it can range by location.