3 ms·
The article mentions sales/VAT/IVA tax. Perversely I think the US actually does this right: In the EU, VAT tax is included in the displayed price while in the
by bladedtoys 13y ago
The article mentions sales/VAT/IVA tax. Perversely I think the US actually does this right:
In the EU, VAT tax is included in the displayed price while in the US, sales tax is not. As the article mentions this is convenient for EU consumers who clearly know the price of their purchase in advance.
But I think it has a bad side effect: consumers do not notice the size of the vat/sales tax as strongly and as a result, I conjecture, there is less resistance to hikes in that tax (which is roughly 20% now). Being a regressive tax, it is quite uncharacteristic of the EU. So I conjecture it may have gotten that high partially because it is not annoying consumers at every purchase.
- claudius 13y agoVAT is explicitly listed on every receipt I have (and you are legally required to list it, I believe), so I know perfectly well that it is 19% at the moment (while it was 16% just a few years back…). But even if it was not listed, I check the menu or price tag to learn how much I have to pay for an item, not to be educated on taxes on checkout.
- paglia_s 13y agoit depends from the country, here in italy from the 1st of october is 22%
- DanBC 13y agoThe UK used to allow people to advertise prices without VAT. But that led to "people being confused" and a "broken free market", so a rule was introduced that if you're selling to end consumers (rather than B2B) you need to include VAT in all advertising to allow easier price comparison. I've never thought about the hidden aspect of that tax. But then, we have very high tobacco duties and fuel duties and etc etc. People in general in the UK don't have much idea about how much tax they're paying. HN is going to be unrepresentative because of the number of people paying higher tax rates or people who are self employed with accountants.