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I've heard this excuse, that tax situation is too complicated, and never understood it. The store knows to charge me the correct value, including all appropriate taxes, when I come to pay. So the data clearly is there, and therefore choosing not to show it to me up front is indeed bait-and-switch. They're telling me a price that is not going to be what they'll actually charge me.

They aren't charging you sales tax. The governement is, and they force the store into being their tax collector too.

It is a very important distinction.

Are you advocating requiring user registration with an address and login just to view products on an e-commerce site? I would dislike that far more than just knowing my sales tax rate is X% and to factor that in my head. I’d probably do significantly less online shopping if I had to register to see products.

Lots of possible solutions to that though, for unregistered users you could have an option to select sales tax % that would default based on location if you let the site access it. How many different sales tax rates actually exist in the US and how often do they change?

Sure, I agree there are probably some half-useful middle ground solutions.

There are thousands of different sales tax rates in the US that change multiple times per year.

Each city, county, state and other things like metro transit districts, water districts and school districts can all contribute to the sales tax rate paid by an individual at the point of sale.

The answer to both is a lot. It’s not just state level but also county, municipal etc levels. Every month there are dozens and dozens of tax rate changes.

Everyone seems to manage with that just fine. There are literally hundreds of entities providing that service to merchants.

That’s not the topic of discussion though. They currently manage it fine because it’s done at point of sale. How would that work if you have to advertise the price including the sales tax?

> How many different sales tax rates actually exist in the US and how often do they change?

Thousands. Every municipality in my area can have their own sales tax and can change them whenever they want. For Texas alone that's ~1,220 potentially different sales taxes which can change at any time. Its not an impossible to keep track of thing though, plenty of organizations do it and most payment processors will essentially handle it for you. But its not exactly easy, aggregating all that and getting it all right in the first place is a good bit of work.

Sounds crazy but ok!

It’s also a logistics thing. Since we also shop online. Store want online prices to match what’s seen in store and making the two match would be a nightmare and not reasonably viable.

On the other hand thing like cars really should have an all inclusive price sticker. They already have an itemized price sticker on the car so there is really nothing stoping these sellers from putting the remaining fees and taxes on there two as that should be consistent with the same dealer location and with such low inventory.

Given that most stores weren’t printing final price pre-internet, I highly doubt this is the reason. Though I do recall some really small convenience stores not getting the memo, but amongst them it isn’t/wasnt common

If displaying post tax prices is not required by law, then it is usually a competitive disadvantage.

People will see the post tax price, compare it in their head with the pre-tax price they saw at some other store, and feel like the post tax prices store is more expensive even if this store’s final price is actually slightly lower than the other store’s price.

Maybe. But have you ever considered stores that offer pick up vs. dine in options? In Ohio for instance, pick up orders of food of any kind aren't taxed, but dine-in is. So if you're at a fast food restaurant they can't magically change the prices on the menu to include tax just because they now know you're dining in.

> Unless the law allowed "between $x and $y depending on your local tax rate" (where X and Y are based on the lowest and highest tax rate for the advertising area).

What's wrong with this solution?

Getting rid of sales tax would be the best solution imo but complicated

Very complicated. Getting rid of consumption tax, means income tax is the sole source for citizen taxation.

To replace consumption tax, which ensures those with large savings, yet no income, still get taxed as they spend, you'd have to somehow have full disclosure of all assets, and tax that, along with all the privacy implications.

And just imagine all the work, with every citizen's assets being examined yearly.

Of course, there are other options, but not many which replace consumption tax.

This seems like speculation not based in reality. Do Montana, Alaska, Oregon, Delaware, or New Hampshirite do this?

I don't know. They do still have federal sales tax I presume, and get kickbacks from the federal level for projects?

Some places may also benefit from high property tax, which now that I think of it, is a "holding" tax, not income tax.

There is no federal sales tax. If you go to a store in Delaware there is no sales tax of any kind charged.

Alaska gets a lot of money from natural resources. New Hampshire gets a lot of money from property taxes. They do have sales tax on a few items, but call it something else (I think restaurants and hotels?). I don't know about the other states.

There are many other taxes. There are tariffs, capital gains, or estate taxes, for example.

Additionally, not all consumption taxes are across-the-board sales taxes.

Across-the-board sales taxes are highly regressive taxes, because basic consumption needs are relatively flat across a population, so the poorest people pay a much higher percentage of their income in sales taxes than the wealthy.

Yes, so here, Canada, we tend to make that flat sales tax more complex, so some groceries are excempt, some meals, etc.

Which makes it harder for people to know all the ins and outs of...

> Yes, so here, Canada, we tend to make that flat sales tax more complex, so some groceries are excempt, some meals, etc.

This is also the case in the US (varies state by state).

The way that could be fixed is classifying goods and services into socio-economic class demand (A, B, C+, etc).

Here in Mexico we have something called the "canasta básica" (basic basket) which encompasses a set of goods that are defined as basic for living (they are 40 https://www.gob.mx/canastabasica unfortunately the list is in an image so not easy to google translate... stupid government pages). These are closely guarded by the government and I believe the price is closely protected.

Something like that could be extrapolated, and set different taxes to different goods and services. Like, (IMHO, please don't flame me) an XBOX should be heavily taxed, running shoes should be heavily taxed, a "gaming graphics card" should be heavily taxed. Same with services: "go cart racing" should be heavily taxed, Fast-food should be heavily taxed, while fixing stuff (fixing your blender, or your washing machine) should not.

It gets complicated. In New York, food and clothing is not taxable. The gotcha is “prepared food”, which is taxable.

For example, an unsliced bagel is food. A sliced to order bagel is prepared food and taxable. A system like you describe would be insanely complex.

Here’s NY guidance on when a sandwich is taxable: https://www.tax.ny.gov/pubs_and_bulls/tg_bulletins/st/sandwi...

As insane as that is, I think it makes the sales tax more progressive, as poorer people spend a high proportion of income on food. I am always struck when I travel to a place like South Carolina, where the property taxes are low, but people with nothing are paying 9% sales taxes on food.

Just to add another layer of complexity.

Many landlords and development companies add on percentage based fees. Some merchants will report these on recipes as PIF Tax (Property Improvement Fees). These are not a technically a tax, but impact the consumer the similarly

Even if you are tax exempt or buying non-taxable items like food, the property own still collects PIF.

PIFs are in the contract between the landlord and merchant the actual details of how fees work are not publicly know. Merchants may benefit from actual property improvements, or the fees are entirely a profit stream for the landlord.

I have never seen this- where have you seen it? I know some places pay a % of their sales to their landlord, but I have always seen that included in their advertised price.

I have seen it at a number of places in Colorado. The local supermarket I go to shows 1% PIF tax

In my state if I photograph a wedding and give the client a flash drive of the photos, I need to charge them sales tax on the entire wedding. If I just deliver the photos online, there’s no sales tax.

If they (or a family member) later purchase prints through their online gallery that are essentially drop shipped to them? Who the hell knows.

Stickers in Europe show both pre and post-tax prices. Online sales just charge you with the tax of their origin country. Anyway difficulty to advertise is no reason to not show real prices on in-store stickers.

With a car it is even more complicated, because the sales tax is based on the county you register it in - not the county that the dealership is in.

>Typically the state will have one rate, the county can have its own rate, the city its own rate, and potentially even special districts with their own sales tax rates.

There's a simple solution to this: stop doing this. Ban cities and districts from having their own sales taxes. There's no reason to allow this. In my country, there's a single national sales tax that's the same everywhere.

The US's problems are a result of its own stupid decisions.

My guess is that your country is much smaller than US (in both population and territory) and what’s more important have strong central government with only minor powers delegated to local authorities. That’s just not US where central government is responsible for fewer things and has strong local authorities that actually responsible for most things that you encounter day to say. (though unfirtunately central gov power is creeping up)

>though unfirtunately central gov power is creeping up

Nothing unfortunate about it: that decentralization is the cause of most of the problems.