this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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When people are way too smug about their wrong answer.
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Habitual inclusion of sales tax but not other fees
At 15 per ticket it's more like $42
it baffles me that tax isn't included in the price. Here, what is on the sticker is how much you pay.
Every state and every city can have different tax rates, that's why
Every time this is brought up Americans give this excuse.
The tesco express down the road has different prices for almost everything compared to the big tesco 200 metres away from it and yet somehow through the magic of modern technology can print different price labels to each other and have different prices in their database systems. It's wild.
As an American, I think it’s one of those dumb things that before technology made stuff easier it made sense. But technology advanced and companies didn’t because the impetuous would be on them and “can’t have that”. Kind of like how checks are still used much more in the States compared to Europe where they’re for all intents and purposes obsolete, because the US didn’t adopt sensible free bank transfers in the same way Europe did.
It’s not like we don’t have “deals” to make goods look cheaper than they are here either. You can still trick consumers while posting the true price.
That’s not why. It could still be required that taxes are included in the price. Franchises jn different locations already have different prices anyway (you think the price for a Big Mac is the same in NYC as it is in a suburb in Ohio?)
It’s literally just so that businesses can advertise costs that are lower than what they are. Same reason Ticketmaster has 14 different convenience fees and tipping is a cultural norm rather than paying servers a living wage to begin with.
Which is not confusing or anything, luckily
Are you American? If so, would you prefer to have the price include all taxes up front, or is there some benefit of having prices listed like this?
The benefit is to the corporations. Tickets seem cheaper when you are planning, even though we all know it will be more expensive. Something to do with our dumb monkey brains
I know I’d eventually get used to it but I’d find that so annoying if I moved to the US.
Yeah true, it's so pervasive that I don't even think about it. It is anti consumer and manipulative and frustrating
The reason is that politicians of a certain persuasion don’t want taxes to be “hidden.” They want them to be open and explicit to keep people angry at the government for taking so much of their money.
There is, in truth, also an advantage for retailers. They can advertise one price for the whole country, or a whole state or whatever, and not need to worry about the thousands upon thousands of different tax jurisdictions with not only different rates, but different categories that products and services can fall into.
For the consumer, it all means you have no fucking clue what you’ll actually end up paying.
Australia has one tax rate for goods and services. It's called the GST. Why can't america do that?
Imagine getting downvoted for a question
A pretty benign one at that, but oh well.
I am American and there is no benefit to not having the prices reflect after taxation, unless you’re some kind of big business where they screw over the patrons at the register like Walmart does.
The problem is that every location has different tax rates. For example here in Texas I pay 8 cents on the dollar where I live, but other locations have a city and/or a county tax which is added to the 8 cents per dollar state tax.
But shops sell the same items at a different prices anyway. It’s not like the manufacture sets the prices, the retailer does. You occasionally see RRP (recommended retail price) on the product packaging in the UK, but the price you pay is the price the shop lists. Surely in America each store has to print the price stickler/labels themselves, so I don’t understand why this is a valid reason.
I’m not demanding an explanation from you btw- thank you for the response, I appreciate the insight. I’m just genuinely confused to why this is way of pricing items is even allowed!
Unified marketing within a chain. McDonald's and the like can advertise their $5 special nation wide and not have to worry about every locale's specific tax.
We also have a metric shit tons of tax jurisdictions. Every state, county, city and special district can add their own tax. I wouldn't be surprised if there are over 100,000 tax jurisdictions in the US. The people who set the price for a specific good don't have to worry about tax cutting into the margin. That's saved for someone else, usually a firm who specializes in tax calculations, at the point of sales.
Just to add on to this, for those who want to understand just how dumb and minute it is, I have different sales tax rates in different parts of my city. 🙃