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Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I know sales tax in various jurisdictions makes it impossible

I heard this argument many times before but never quite understood the explanation. Could you elaborate on this?

In the US there are taxes at the time of sale. These taxes change depending on where you are making the purchase, where you live, who you are, and what you are buying.

Those things are fixed at purchase though aren't they? I don't pay a lower sales tax in a different state because I live somewhere else, and I don't pay less sales tax on a book if I buy it in the same transaction as something with a different levy. Europe has VAT on most items, but the rates are different based on what you're buying, where you're buying it and where you reside, but we manage it

The POS system knows how to calculate the cost of each item, why can't they just out that on the sticker instead,.

For some reason I can't reply to a child of this comment. It would be easy enough to require all advertising to publish the lowest and highest all in price within the geographic area of the advertisement. For many ads, it would also be possible to require at least per state granularity. That would not be an onerous burden.

Sure, and there are some places that include tax in the listed price. Usually businesses that do this figure it out so the price after tax comes to a whole number. This goes against the common .99 marketing psychology, and is a red flag that they might be skimming.

However if the sale is online and the company has a presence in multiple states they have to charge based on the user, which they cant do until they know who the user is.

Edit: Just to be clear I wish they would put the final price. Here is a picture I found of Pat's King of Steaks in Philadelphia, they have price tax and total for each item.

https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/03/2c/33/c2/...

Seems like this would be a pretty simple fix wouldn't it? Choose your state when you jump onto a shopping site to see the price with taxes and shipping included. Instead they wait to bait and switch at the register.

Seconding the question by @maccard. You're eventually charged a certain amount during payment so in principle it is possible.

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