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Comment by rapht | Hacker News Reader

To me, this relates to a broader subject: the way prices are displayed.

In Europe, laws basically mandate that what you as a customer see on a price tag or price list, is what you ultimately pay.

You don't have to do any guesswork, looking at the fine print, compute anything in your head. You pay the price that is displayed, and there should be no expectation from any one that you pay anything above that.

When I go to a restaurant, I'm not like buying the food on the one hand, and the service on the other hand, and everything that the taxes cover above all that. I'm paying the restaurant for dining, which includes the food, the service, and whatever taxes the restaurant has to pay.

The details are none of my business... and I shouldn't have to do any contorsions to compare prices between restaurants!

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the tax being calculated separately seems suspiciously petty to my French ass.

I’m used to it now, but the only rational I could find by asking around “why is the tax not part of the final displayed price” were :

- “it depends from state to state.” Taxes are also different in Spain, France, Germany and Italy … we use the same currency and we don’t feel the urge to display our taxes by removing them from the displayed prices. Even in places like Andorra, where the tax on Tabacco is close to 0.

- a less common rationale; often find in the libertarian type of interlocutors. “It’s to show what the government is taking you”

Sadly; I think it’s the second one? I’ve ask that question a lot in the last 10 years. People just shrug it as un-important and we move on with the sale.

Or maybe nobody knows?

American taxes vary way more than in Europe. You walk a mile to a nearby town and suddenly it's a different tax. Not by much, it's like less than one percent, but still.

Taxes can varies from counties to counties? Ha, I never noticed that.

Kinda goes to show that it's not helping to display them like that.

Brazil is also a federation, it is larger than continental US, and has much more complicated taxes that also vary per state and per municipality (county) -- and yet we have "European-style" laws that require that the advertised price is the full price. It has been like this since forever.

If Brazil, a much poorer country in comparison, can do it then so does the US. I think that arguments in the contrary don't hold any water and are poor rationalizations ("US is special").

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