4 ms·
Most of the stores in my area have started requiring people to pay with exact change or by card because they can't get pennies to make change. Personally, I th
by JohnFen 1y ago
Most of the stores in my area have started requiring people to pay with exact change or by card because they can't get pennies to make change.
Personally, I think stores should just start setting prices to avoid the need for pennies, but that would be too easy, I guess.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- knollimar 1y agoIf your sales tax rate is 8.875%, what do you price a banana at to avoid change?
- randerson 1y agoThis problem is easily solved in countries that use VAT
- knollimar 1y agoIt really isn't; it's just acceptable to accumulate this rounding error I'm implying in those countries. Which is fine, but should be acknowledged.
- carlosjobim 1y agoYou price it including sales tax. Sticker price is final price.
- rufus_foreman 1y agoIf someone is buying a banana for resale, or buying with WIC or SNAP benefits (among other things), they would not owe sales tax. So if the price included sales tax, the sticker price would not be the final price. You do not know the final price until you know how they are paying for it, what they are using it for, and when they are buying it (among other things). Falsehoods programmers believe about sales tax (among other things).
- carlosjobim 1y agoThen that discount can be deducted by the cash register when it's time to pay.
- knollimar 1y agothis is me preempting: yes I know I picked a bad example since produce isn't often taxed. Assume it's a prepackaged organic banana.
- micromacrofoot 1y ago$10
- ianferrel 1y agoSetting prices to avoid the need for pennies is probably technically challenging given the combination of requirements to post prices and sales taxes that don't always round the same way. If the effective tax rate is 7.432%, you can price single items so that the price plus tax ends up in a multiple of $0.05, but if you get a purchase with multiple items, you either need to round somewhere or post prices that are like $9.346263437.
- thayne 1y agosales tax should be charged per item, not for the total transaction, so that it's possible to list prices that include the sales tax.
- MrZander 1y agoSales tax varies by state/county/city. It is generally not cost-effective to have each individual store label all their products with local sales taxes applied.
- ryandrake 1y agoI see this excuse all the time, but why not? This calculation does not need to happen more often than the product prices are adjusted. There's no difference in effort between labeling something "$5.52+tax" and labeling it "$6".
- MrZander 1y agoThe difference is where the product is labeled. Is it labeled nationally like Arizona Iced Tea? Is it labeled at a regional bottling facility? Or is it labeled at the store itself? And what about when tax rates change, you gonna go pull all the labels off everything in the whole store and update them? Most of this could be resolved by not putting the prices on the products themselves, but that isn't as good of an experience for the shopper.
- 1y ago
- jandrewrogers 1y agoIt isn't that simple. There are stacked tax jurisdictions that can change their fraction of the tax independently. Some of those taxes are conditional at point-of-sale so the exact rate varies from customer to customer. It is a mess but also not easy to unwind or patch over.