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Comment by exe34 | Hacker News Reader

Could they please also add all the federal, state, city, district, street tax into the prices please? The US is the only place I've ever been to where I never really knew what the price of groceries/snacks were going to be until after I've paid, no matter what it says on the label.

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I’m more sympathetic to this. There are plenty of cases where the tax rate is a solid “it depends”. For example, in some places a cold burrito is a non-taxable grocery item and a hot burrito is a taxable meal. A local place here has one tax rate if you order your pie boxed up to go (grocery) and another if you ask for a fork and eat it there (meal). It’s a Schrôdinger’s tax where you don’t know what it’s going to be until you check out.

And these categories aren’t known until you check out? Come on…

I honestly don’t know all of them. Those are 2 examples I’m aware of.

They can still label them correctly. Here we have Tesco normal prices like £20 for a sandwich, £3 with a clubcard, and they just write both prices together.

But that’s not “£20 unless you microwave it, and then it’s £25”, is my point.

Also, that better be a helluva sandwich.

> “£20 unless you microwave it, and then it’s £25”

You just showed it can be written easily.

£20 (£25 microwaved)

Item: (Served) (cold takeway)

Buritto: 25£ 20£

See trivial...

And that's exactly how e.g. coffee is priced in various coffee shops in Europe: Two prices, One is served, the other is takeaway.

It's the way they get you to hand over your information with the clubcard.

California is implementing income based pricing for home utilities provided by private companies.

I don't think it is impossible that they will try to do the same for groceries. The cost of beans would then depend on your income tax bracket

Everywhere else you don't know what you pay for a cup of coffee and what you pay in taxes to have a right to buy it.

Yeah you do, it's itemised on the receipt/invoice. You're legally required to break it down and provide a receipt so that business customers are able to correctly account for VAT. The only difference is which price goes on the tag/menu.

I've heard this argument loads of times in the US, and it's clearly based on a belief that taxes should add friction so people understand how expensive they are.

Most other countries have gone the other way and decided that transparent sticker pricing is more important than people understanding that their taxes are separate from the price of goods.

Incorrect. In, say, Europe, the final price is on the label and that's what you pay, the receipt lists the individual parts (core price, value added tax etc). And in Japan too - I'm looking at a receipt right now.

Not only that, no tipping. Wages are negotiated between employees and employers, customers have no obligations in it.

https://www.today.com/food/restaurant-surcharges-t263507

> In Milan, in 2008, his bill at a pizzeria included a charge for napkins. “Who eats pizza without using at least one napkin?” he asked, but was summarily told that the restaurant incurs a cost to provide linens. “I’m still not sure why I wasn’t charged for sitting on a chair or using my utensils to eat my food, since these items also require costs to maintain,” he said, only half jokingly.

> Two years later, in Florence, he actually was charged for the chair he was sitting in, or more specifically, the orientation of his chair. “My chair faced the piazza and, apparently, only a limited number of chairs had that view.” Even though he and his dining companion ordered more or less the same dish, Britton’s tab was a couple Euros more. He recalled: “The owners felt that it was necessary to charge more for the ‘exclusive’ experience.”

I can assure you crap like this would be just as prevalent, nontransparent and unenforced regardless of VAT and pricing rules.

It wouldn't actually pass already.

Besides, I'm sure there are stories of foreign tourists being ripped of by unscrupulous businesses in the US too, if you ask around enough.

For whatever reason, tourist hotspots in Italy have no shortage of unscrupulous business owners. If you've ever been to Rome in high season without a local guide, you either know what I mean or have some next-level karma cashed in.

How does that work for online shopping? Do you put your location in at the start? Someone else mentioned online shops and it never occurred to me before now to wonder how to implement that.

VAT varies across countries but not inside countries (except that there may be a different VAT for, say, foodstuff than other items, or services). For online shopping in EU you pay the VAT of the destination (W. You select your location and you'll (normally) see "your" price, and in any case you'll always see "including VAT" mentioned.

that's not true. you have it written explicitly in the final check. you just don't have to do the mental gymnastics of figuring out how much you'll pay before ordering, which is absolutely absurd

The only "good side" of having price sticker without tax is that taxes can change as they wish and it cannot be used as an excuse to change the price anyway. It's not that common but sometimes governments do apply VAT changes and usually sellers uses it to push prices up more, because people are already expecting it. Or if the VAT goes down, they don't reduce the final price that much.

But overall, as an European, I prefer how we do it.

Huh? It's typically stated on receipts, by law.

Mostly because, and this is the kicker, that does not matter to the vast majority of people buying coffee.

If I buy a cup of coffee with a listed price of €2, I pay €2. I know that 9% of that is value added tax (here in the Netherlands), and the receipt will show that too — if I care, which I usually don't.

Value added taxes are pretty much a fact of life. I know it's there, and there is absolutely no need to constantly bug me about them by doing funny stuff with the pricing; just show me what I have to pay at the till.

Companies are legally required to break out VAT taxes on a bill because it’s a value added tax so it matters if something is an end product like a car or something request to make that end product.

Basically if you buy a PC and the VAT on that sale was 200$ then the company selling you the item might send in 50$ and receipts for 150$ in VAT on items they used to manufacture that PC. Without that exception there’s a huge incentive to vertically integrate manufacturing which would have negative economic consequences.

So? The receipt still shows the VAT amount, as required. This is not a problem.

I was trying to clarify for anyone who might misunderstand your comment.

It’s fine not to look at a receipt for the details, but I felt someone reading your comment may not realize it was available and you just didn’t look at it. You included a “and the receipt will show that too” but that’s the kind of thing people gloss over.

To be fair, if people will gloss over a random part of an answer, they'll gloss over a random part of another answer too.

Sure, which is why I opened with the important bit: “Companies are legally required to break out VAT taxes on a bill”

Of course we do, the taxes are listed in the receipt. We just know how much we are paying ahead of time.

You will need to have different prices on the drive through and dine in (and another for to go even if order at the dine in register).

https://www.taxjar.com/blog/food/sales-tax-by-state-to-go-re...

https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/industry/restaurant-owners/ - and in particular https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/lawguides/vol1/sutr/1603.html

Which is why it should be mandatory to show at least three numbers on price labels: product or service price, tax (optionally split by taxing authority), and final cost.

Fees are different from taxes in that they're not mandated and the customer has no direct way to affect them.

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