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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Like I said, you can have a debate about how taxes are displayed on a price list. I respectfully disagree on solely including them in the price and making them "hidden". Calling them out is a good reminder of exactly how much you are paying for government services.

For example, the one common tax in the US that is hidden in the price is tax on gasoline. I think it would be better to specifically call this out, especially since gas taxes can vary so much by jurisdiction. I mean, pretty much all adults where I live know our sales tax rate is 8.25%, but I have actually no clue what my per-gallon tax on gas is.

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Stockholm syndrome talking.

Displaying THE PRICE on products is so amazingly basic that it's always mind blowing seeing Americans think this is a complicated question. It's not. If I have to pay 5 dollars at checkout THEN THE PRICE IS FIVE DOLLARS.

It might be somewhat complicated when every town has a different tax rate.

The store is just in a single town, it is trivial for them to fix their labels. For the user on the other hand it isn't trivial to figure out the tax rate for every store they visit as they travel since as you admit it changes everywhere.

For a big corp, they want to advertise nationally. "$1 hamburgers!" or "$799 refrigerator!". You can't make a national ad if you have to have precise pricing.

Not the strongest argument, but there it is.

A college friend worked at a pizza place that straddled a county line. One county had its own sales tax; the other did not. The register was in the back of the store to take advantage of this (the location of the register was considered the point of sale for tax purposes). Question: would it have been legal for them to advertise a price in the higher-tax-county part of the store that only applied if you bought the pizza from the outher county?

Local sales tax and national VAT are similar, but they don't work that much alike in practice.

I’m really not concerned if a business has to spend a few percent more on their ad budget.

It’s not that. If you have to always show the full price any ads which include it become pretty much illegal (besides physical billboards etc.) unless you can somehow figure out where the person viewing it lives (not an option for TV).

While I wouldn’t mind if most ads just disappeared I don’t see how effectively banning businesses from advertising their prices would benefit the consumers.

> For a big corp, they want to advertise nationally. "$1 hamburgers!" or "$799 refrigerator!". You can't make a national ad if you have to have precise pricing.

If we zoom out of the “uniquely American issue” mindset for a second and look at how this is solved elsewhere, then it becomes clear that it doesn’t have to be an issue.

In this day and age plenty of multinational corporations advertise a euro price that applies for all the countries in Europe that carry the euro. This is a situation where companies have to account for varying VAT rates.

The solution? Companies take this into account w/r/t their margins when advertising a euro price that applies to all euro countries.

In the US however it’s even less of an issue. I’ve noticed as a European that when you watch TV here in the US many ads are hyper localized, mentioning the closest local store. If they can do that then they can list the price the item has at that store.

The real reason the full price including taxes isn’t used is because companies can make it look cheaper without hurting their margins, thus draw in more customers.

> Companies take this into account w/r/t their margins when advertising a euro price that applies to all euro countries.

Or they just recalculate the price based on you shipping info.

It would be rather absurd to expect companies to just “account” for an up to 7% difference in tax rates between different countries.

> TV here in the US many ads are hyper localized

While there are many local channels in some states the tax rate might even differ between counties or towns.

> The real reason the full price including taxes isn’t used is because companies can make it look cheaper without hurting their margins, thus draw in more customers.

Conjecture. Also you’re assuming that most people are incapable of doing basic math.

The refrigerator company can just sell for $799 and take the taxes out of that. Or sell for $899 and take the taxes out of that.

If they can calculate it at the cash register, they can most certainly calculate it when putting up price tags.

Some people shopping at the store don't have to pay sales tax.

They can get a discount and leave the rest of us be.

You didn't think that through heh. They know the price at checkout.

I did, hence:

> somewhat

Even if by law the post-tax price is shown, is there any law preventing showing the pre-tax price also? Surely not.

Seems to me giving people a shock at the checkout is a particularly evil way of making taxes explicit. It isn't like the taxes aren't broken down on EU receipts for those who care; in fact it's quite explicit.

> is there any law preventing showing the pre-tax price also?

In the EU the receipt must show what amount of the price was VAT.

This is so that companies can deduct the VAT in taxation (basically only the final consumer of the product/service pays VAT. Everyone else in the chain can deduct it in taxation)

>Like I said, you can have a debate about how taxes are displayed on a price list

You can, but one side is going to be spouting garbage. Listing the actual total cost to the purchaser is so obviously better than not doing so.

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