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Comment by brownbat | Hacker News Reader

Consumer protection rules should require up-front labeling of final price paid, including all taxes, shipping, and fees.

Maybe, as some have argued in this thread, the algorithm is agnostically detecting Amazon's popularity. So I don't want to pick on just Amazon.

I have the same problem if I drive to a new state. I'll have no idea how much things really cost, because I made the mistake of not memorizing all local sales tax schedules along my route before getting in the car.

We should make all merchants play on the same playing field, one with the lowest possible incentives to confuse customers by showing them any price they won't actually pay.

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>Consumer protection rules should require up-front labeling of final price paid, including all taxes, shipping, and fees.

I disagree specifically with the taxes not being added on a sale separately. I live in Mexico, a country that does mark any sale price as the sale price + taxes. Your taxes are already included in the final price. I will attempt to explain why I believe this is a bad thing below.

It's hard to appreciate it as someone on your side who grew up always seeing the taxed amount in receipts and the like, but here in Mexico people are largely uneducated about how much they are paying for purchase taxes. We are currently paying 16%[1] on purchase taxes aside from frontier states.

Every time this comes out in conversation people tend to be shocked, usually thinking the amount paid would be less. The sad part of this is that it's common not to know, if I had to guess around 95% of the community likely doesn't know how much purchase tax is, with a big part of the other 5% being business owners that have to deal with it in a daily basis.

What I believe is that constantly seeing how much you are being charged when it comes to your taxes makes you politically aware of how much your state is charging you. Having this number hidden for you is certainly convenient, I won't lie about that. Having the number you see on a shelf be the exact same number you are going to pay certainly is easier, however, I believe this knowledge by the population helps towards keeping politicians honest.

Since all of your citizens are painfully aware of exactly how much you are paying on every purchase, raising that number becomes substantially harder, since it would be met with much bigger backlash.

This is a theory that I have bouncing around in my head, and I don't have any hard evidence to back it up, but in conclusion I think that having visible taxes helps educate the population, and keep the government honest. Which would be my argument against hiding that number in a "purchase total" figure.

[1] http://www.itimbre.com/impuestos/

Really great point, I'm definitely sympathetic to that concern and don't want to allow "hidden taxes."

I think there's a risk though, I don't think people here realize how much the state is charging either, they just slide a card and never look at a receipt.

And in general, while I want people to know the price of taxes, if that comes at the cost of not knowing the price of goods, then I worry that cost is very steep. Government transparency is a priority for me, but price transparency a slightly higher one.

Maybe an ideal compromise here would be a bolded final price, with a breakdown of how much in tax and fees beside that, or broken out on any receipt.

In the US we have lots of hidden taxes too - corporate taxes (some of the highest in the world), regulatory fees, that kind of thing.

Additionally, we impose various surreptitious tax-like requirements on companies: health insurance can't charge your actuarial price (equivalent to taxing the healthy and paying the sick), rural and city customers must pay similar prices for various resources, etc.

But I agree with you - we should replace all these taxes with a single transparent consumption tax.

>corporate taxes (some of the highest in the world)

Highest theoretical rates, the effective tax rate is another story.

"The top statutory tax rate of 35% in the U.S. is somewhat higher than that of 30 other OECD countries, but the average effective tax rate — the actual rate paid after deductions and credits — is slightly lower than our competitors" [0]

[0]http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing...

The quoted statement is highly deceptive. It is backed up with "Our average effective tax rate is 27.1% compared with 27.7% for the other 30 OECD countries, according to CRS", but 27.7% is the rate including the US, which is not a sensible comparison. According to the cited CRS report, the average excluding the US is 23.3% [edit, see below: note that these are GDP-weighted averages].

Additionally, the PwC study the CRS uses [1] provides a full list and ranking. The only OECD countries with higher effective rates are Japan, Germany, and Italy. So, the US effective rate is lower than that of only 3 of "our competitors" and higher than that of the other 26.

[1] http://businessroundtable.org/sites/default/files/Effective_...

At a glance I feel like I am missing something. If the average without the US is 23.3% and the US average is 27.1% then how can the combination of the two lead to an average of 27.7%? That doesn't seem right.

I understand that including the US would raise the average, but it shouldn't take it from below the US average to above the US average.

The average is weighted by GDP (another reason it is important to examine the rankings).

>"Consumer protection rules should require up-front labeling of final price paid, including all taxes, shipping, and fees."

I guess that would be difficult when there are several shipping methods being utilized. If I buy an item stocked by amazon I'll usually get it the next day via amazon logistics, DPD, or royal mail (when I'm in the UK).

If it's a marketplace seller it could be royal mail first class, royal mail signed for, royal mail 'wish upon a star' class or, if I'm really unlucky, some random 'gig economy' courier.

That's an awful lot of options to weigh up and most of the time I get no choice in which will be used.

Like someone else has commented, I'll buy items stocked and fulfilled by amazon, whenever it is an option, and I don't care if that means I pay a bit more.

Buying cheapest usually costs you more in one way or another.

I will usually pay a little more to have Amazon fulfill as well, but that is completely orthogonal to my desire for more transparent pricing from all merchants.

Yes there are options, but if sites can store billing information, they can store shipping preferences. They can pick a reasonable default.

In fact, they already have all the necessary information, you can tell by the way some online merchants will have a single price in bold, then below that in fine print +$x shipping + $x tax, like so: http://imgur.com/krReEkz

They just don't have any interest in advertising more accurate (and thus higher) prices than their competitors.

They know the numbers, there's no reason to hide the final price here, except that the competitive market is forcing anti-consumer behavior.

Well I, kind of, get your point but, as your image gives a perfect example, this isn't a problem unique to amazon.

On one hand I just wish they wouldn't list marketplace sellers when they already stock something themselves. But, doesn't having all those other options (as imperfect as they are) sway things a little in the consumer's interest?

My comment: (about all retailers, including B&M).

Your reply: "I'll buy items stocked and fulfilled by amazon"

My next post: (Me too, my point wasn't really about Amazon.)

Your reply: "this isn't a problem unique to amazon" (and your evidence isn't even from amazon, so that's a strange way to make a point about amazon!)

Me: ಠ_ಠ

I get it, you're trolling me. Very funny.

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