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