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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

Sales tax cannot be per-calculated, since it is charged on the total sale. Rounding errors will get you. (when I worked fast food 30 years ago one value meal was $3.18, but two were $6.27) The government pays attention to this type of thing and they will get you for those pennies. (remember there are many governments, it is possibly all the local governments in question would decide not to pay attention, but that doesn't mean those rules apply to someone else who lives in a different area and thus has different local governments)

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> Sales tax cannot be per-calculated, since it is charged on the total sale.

Most of the developed world pre-calculates sales tax.

If McDonalds charges you $10.32 in Australia, the government gets $0.84(8181812...) of it. Rounding isn't an issue because you don't write a check for each individual $0.84(8181812...), you pay them the aggregate amount on a regular basis.

Here is a list of 20 district sales taxes in California alone (out of ~150).

Los Angeles County Measure H: 0.25%, 10-01-2017 to 03-31-2025

City of Orland Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2017 to 03-31-2025

Rio Dell City Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2015 to 12-31-2024

City of El Monte Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025

City of San Pablo Reduction Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 10-01-2017 to 09-30-2022

Town of Truckee Trails Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 10-01-2014 to 09-30-2024

City of La Habra Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025

City of Seal Beach Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2019 to 03-31-2025

City of Westminster Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2017 to 12-31-2022

City of Pismo Beach Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 10-01-2008 to 03-31-2025

Pacific Grove City Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 10-01-2008 to 09-30-2022

Town of San Anselmo Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2014 to 03-31-2023

City of Sausalito 2014 Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2015 to 03-31-2023

Mariposa County Healthcare Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2005 to 03-31-2025

Mendocino County Mental Health Treatment Act Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2018 to 03-31-2023

Mendocino Library Special Transactions and Use Tax: 0.125%, 04-01-2012 to 03-31-2023

City of Atwater Public Safety Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 07-01-2013 to 03-31-2023

City of Capitola Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 04-01-2005 to 03-31-2025

City of Campbell Vital City Services Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025

City of Davis Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 10-01-2014 to 03-31-2025

* https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/formspubs/cdtfa105.pdf

Yes. This is silly. We should change it. (But it's largely an issue for online sales, not physical locations. The McDonalds in San Anselmo, barring The Big One, stays in San Anselmo.)

See also: American healthcare, college, etc. "Our setup is absurdly complex in bad ways" is not an argument for keeping that setup, it's an argument for making fixes.

Why is this silly? If you're selling something, sales tax (or in other parts of the world, VAT or GST) will be owed[1]. Different places will have different levels of commerce and budgetary requirements, and sales taxes are one of the ways they can fill their coffers. Allowing for local jurisdictions to set their own tax rates is part of the federal system of government; indeed in the U.S. it is arguable that a national sales tax rate a la Europe would be unconstitutional.

And why should we eliminate sales taxes, etc. for online sales? Isn't the whole point of software that it makes it trivial to handle multiple sales taxes?

[1] Sales tax, VAT, etc. are taxes on the buyer but are collected by the seller as a matter of administrative convenience. Use tax / reverse charge covers the situations where a non-local seller doesn't collect the tax, but compliance was so low in the first several decades of e-commerce that every government around the world decided to expand sales tax compliance for online sales to non-local sellers.

> Why is this silly?

Because it's an immense amount of paperwork, compliance, legal risk, etc. all to avoid just setting a more reasonable state/federal level of taxation. The US has a deeply weird attitude towards any changes to taxation.

> And why should we eliminate sales taxes, etc. for online sales?

No one's proposing that. Online sales just introduce the issue of not knowing the tax jurisdiction that's applicable for a brand-new shopper.

just setting a more reasonable state/federal level of taxation.

We have reasonable levels of taxation right now. 0% federal rate, because the Constitution does not allow for a federal sales tax. States can set their own rates based on their own needs, just like every member of the EU can set its own rate. And counties and cities can tag-along with their state's sales tax.

This was complicated back in the day when it was all paper tables. Software makes it easy. Excel makes it easy, and the dedicated sales tax SaaS make it even easier.

At my last company, we handled hundreds of thousands of sales a day globally and my tax department spent less than four hours each month on sales tax/VAT compliance because we used Avalara to handle sales tax rate lookups and compliance. (The four hours were for filing the VAT returns in the two dozen countries we couldn't file through Avalara.) To put it in terms a programmer would understand: each month, my entire department spent less time on sales tax compliance than the average Typescript programmer spends on compiling.

Online sales just introduce the issue of not knowing the tax jurisdiction that's applicable for a brand-new shopper.

That has been an issue for decades, and people got along just fine in the days when they had to do it by hand.

> 0% federal rate, because the Constitution does not allow for a federal sales tax.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/sales_tax

"The federal government could theoretically levy a nationwide federal sales tax under Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, but Congress has declined to do so."

(And I'm advocating for a higher state/Federal income tax rate so we don't need sales tax rates to make up the budget gaps we fill with sales taxes today.)

> To put it in terms a programmer would understand: each month, my entire department spent less time on sales tax compliance than the average Typescript programmer spends on compiling.

Sure. Because you outsourced that work to a third-party. Who doesn't work for free. You pass that cost to your customers, yes?

There are pros and cons. this system means a town isn't limited as to income because someone else won't allow the tax they want to pay

I agree and never made the argument it should not be fixed. It is cause and effect, however.

Are those based on the location of the seller or the location of the buyer?

Buyer.

> one value meal was $3.18, but two were $6.27

That sure is a HUGE rounding error! 9¢ savings by doubling up is nothing to sneeze at!

> they will get you for those pennies

Was your restaurant ever audited? That is a lot of pennies!

Opps, my memory of prices is obviously wrong after 30 years. I can't tell you which number is right though.

One penny times the thousand or so meals per day over a year adds up. I don't know if we were audited - but I' s we would have been shut down for failing the audit.

Sure it can. It works perfectly fine in many other countries.

There's a slight difference between having one tax rate at the country level and having numerous differing state and local sales tax rates. You don't even know what to charge the customer until you know their exact location.

Other countries have states and cities, too.

(And in the fast food example, the customer's home location doesn't matter. The store's does.)

But do they have the same kind of state and local sales tax rules that we do? Again, _you can't know the price to display if you don't know where exactly in the country the package is going_. It is not possible to display the "final price" in US online stores ahead of checkout unless the user is already logged in AND the shipping address is the same as where the user lives.

The juice is not worth the squeeze for online retailers. Users are used to seeing the final amount at checkout and you know, it's really not that hard to mentally estimate <price of thing I'm buying plus 10%> (which is actually usually an overestimate).

That's an argument for fixing the rules. As functional rules in this regard are clearly possible to create.

The EU has a similar smattering of disparate jurisdictions (with varying VAT rates) just like the US does.

Googling says 27 tax jurisdictions in the EU versus over 13000 in the US. Again, not quite as simple as you're making it out to be. And for what? Making the checkout process slightly more convenient for people who lack the mental ability to estimate their total?

> Googling says 27 tax jurisdictions in the EU versus over 13000 in the US.

Cool, great place to start. Let's fix that. Both have similar land mass, similar populations, similar balance of federal-ish and state-ish and local-ish governance, similar cultures, etc.

> And for what? Making the checkout process slightly more convenient for people who lack the mental ability to estimate their total?

Surely handling 13k tax jurisdictions is expensive for businesses and consumers on many levels?

what are the unintended concecuences of your plan? Until you figure themout don't propose a change as it might be overall worse.

Proposal: Brick-and-mortar stores, at least, should have to list in-store prices inclusive of tax.

Unintended consequences: None?

Forcing brick-and-mortar stores to show a higher price including tax than that shown by online stores seems like it would have some unintended consequences. It would likely push more people towards online purchases even if the final price is identical.

I deliberately browse AirBnB's Australian version because it tells me the actual cost of the listing, inclusive of tax and fees.

Prices are already quite different between online and in-person shopping.

For a computer what is the difference between 27 and 13000?

There are a lot of people who cannot calculate what 10% more equals to. You mentioned that's an estimate and often not correct, so even if you do the calculation, there's a good chance it's wrong. A lot of people are on a budget and what is a rounding error to you, could be the difference between being able to afford it or not for them.

In Germany different tax rates apply to items that you need to survive such as food and other goods. It can be difficult to know which rate applies to a product. The good thing is you don't need to know because the total price is displayed

In the EU, when I go to some online shop it first lets me chooose my language (and country), then it displays all the prices with the correct VAT amount.

You in the US keep saying "we are so special, so it is impossible to change things for the better in any way". While other countries also have complex rules for similar things yet they still manage to provide a better experience for shoppers, citizens, sick people - everyone.

need to get DOGE on it.

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