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Comment by simpleguitar | Hacker News Reader

As the article points out, there are laws that say people who pay via SNAP debit cards "cannot be charged more than others".

If cash payments are rounded down, but debit card payments aren't, they are in violation of state law.

The article also points out that rollback of pennies in Canada and other places were planned, addressing these kinds of issues. USA is doing it with no such planning.

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> there are laws that say

Hmm, maybe this is why it should be handled by Congress and not at the whim of the executive. They can handle all this in one piece of legislation.

If the law is slow to change or there are no available pennies, the stores can adjust the prices to match the expected rounding of prices. I can't imagine someone being prosecuted from rounding a penny but it's a quick and easy way to avoid any doubt.

> I can't imagine someone being prosecuted from rounding a penny

Under this executive, I wouldn't be so sure. If a grocery chain starts deviating from the law, then the government can use it against them to further a political agenda like we've seen with Eric Adams for example.

The easy thing for stores to do then seems to be apply the cash rounding to EBT and card transactions.

This seemed so obvious to me…

Even easier would be to make a gift to Trump's ballroom or buy into one of his many crypto schemes or Truth Social stock.

> the stores can adjust the prices to match the expected rounding of prices

Not necessarily. Anything measured by weight will still be subject to this issue.

Anything measured by weight is already rounding prices to the nearest cent. If something is $1/lb and I have 0.995 lbs of it, I get charged $1.00 not 99.5 cents. Presumably just rounding to the nearest 5 cents isn't that different.

Of course we don't expect anyone to be charged fractional cents because our currency doesn't support it. So just changing our smallest currency unit from 1 cent to 5 cents.

> Presumably just rounding to the nearest 5 cents isn't that different

The above context was that rounding to 5 cents might be illegal due to laws regarding SNAP debit prices being different than cash prices.

Round it for SNAP debit cards too.

Yea but I guess my thinking is that all totals would just be rounded to the nearest 5 cents, like how they're currently rounded to the nearest 1 cent. So would be the same price whether debit or cash. We already round percentage based taxes to nearest cent, even though it's feasible you could charge someone fractional cents on a debit card.

Really state laws just should be amended to include something like "costs must be the same or as close as possible using the currently available denominations of currency"

That's why it should be rounded for everything. No pennies should probably mean that any final transaction totals are rounded to the nearest nickel. Whether they pay with cash, credit, debit, snap, gift card, etc...

IMO, rounding for cash purchases only sounds worse than keeping the pennies.

Good luck getting Congress to do anything at all, ever. Best we can offer you is one big partisan pork bill every two years, no matter who's in charge and no matter what voters actually want. Maybe if one senator (foolishly) decided to make penny rounding his pet issue, and worked his ass off at it, he could get half of it wrapped into the bi-annual pork bill.

The article also points out that some states and a lot cities require retailers to provide exact change. Congress would need to pass legislation to allow rounding nationally. I'm guessing in the meantime they'll continue holding pennies from previous years?

If the national government literally stops creating a certain precision of money, i expect the "exact change" requirement should be invalid.

You volunteering your business to be the the test legal case for that? Or are you stocking pennies?

“change will be provided via Venmo” sign at the entrance :)

Payers are allowed to complete transaction using a single method, you can't violate that right.

Is gas sold as a whole penny amounts in those locations? Where I am it's always something and 9/10ths of a cent.

Allowing gas stations to denominate their prices by the 10th of a cent has always struck me as a just an underhanded and extreme way to practice the "9.99" retail psychological trick. Why not allow retailers to price things 9.99999? Ridiculous.

It's because technically the dollar is divided into Dimes, Cents, and Mil. (this is why dimes say 'One Dime' on them instead of 'Ten Cents'.

So while the mil isn't really used anywhere else that regular people see any more due to inflation, it is a valid division of the dollar and that's why they are able to get away with it.

So do whatever they do with mils but for the penny too. They don’t nor have they ever minted a mil coin, so the procedure for this is already well established if this is correct.

Has a Mil ever been minted?

It has not - and it's been more than 150 years since the last sub-cent denomination (the half penny) was minted.

Not by the US mint but they exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_tax_token

There is no such decipence division in the UK, but fuel is still sold with a vestigial .9 pence on the end. In fact, since the denomination is per litre, not gallon, the .9 is about 4 times more significant.

When the final calculation of XX.YYY litres * AAA.9 pence/litre is done, it's then rounded off to 1 pence.

Currency conversions are also frequently done with readers that aren't a round multiple of pence, even in official government tables: https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/exchange_rates/view/...

> (this is why dimes say 'One Dime' on them instead of 'Ten Cents'.

No, it's purely stylistic. We tend to spell out denominations on coinage and "dime" is just the American spelling of disme, meaning a tenth.

The capped bust dime from 1809-1839 had "10 C." rather than "One Dime". Similarly, the capped bust quarter said "25 C." instead of the modern "Quarter Dollar", the half dollar said "50 C." rather than the later "Half Dollar" and the half dime said "5 C." rather than the later "Half Dime."

Most of the 18th century and early 19th century coinage, besides half pennies and pennies didn't have their denomination written on them at all.

I'd like to clarify that point a bit.

They're allowed to get away with it because of a dysfunctional lobbying driven government. Mils don't exist in the common knowledge and if any reasonable person looked at this they'd call it out. It is useful in accounting but a Mill has never been minted and the last half penny was minted in 1857. It has never been possible using issued physical legal tender in the US to pay a debt of $3.129

The Mill doesn't exist because of some archaic need - it's pure dysfunction and the utilization of it in gas prices is a practice that should and very easily could be made illegal.

Yes, the "Mill" discussion looks to be totally irrelevant. [1] and [2] seem to back up my claim that, at least in modern times, it's purely a "just-below pricing" psychological trick and has nothing to do with the Mill unit.

$4.999 looks a lot smaller than $5.00 to everyday people and it makes the gas company more money than $4.99. That's all there is to it.

1: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/why-do-gas-prices-alw...

2. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/14/energy/why-gas-prices-fractio...

Certain states have manufactured plastic mill tokens in the 1920s and 30s to aid in the payment of taxes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_tax_token

of course 9.99...(repeating) is mathematically 10, so I have a hard time being against allowing that.

Turns out the station charges you a round number of cents per gallon. Then there are federal taxes, which are, IIRC, 24.5 cents per gallon. And then there's state tax, which varies from state to state but seems to always be x.4 cents per gallon.

So I don't think it's just "evil retailer tricks".

Actually, I'd say by all means, allow them to price things $9.99̅ so we can all agree it's equal to $10 and be done with it.

The amount is only rounded at the end of the transaction. Those fractions make a difference if you're buying more than a few gallons

Is the amount rounded before or after taxes? Must be after or you have to round again. So who eats or gains the rounding? The merchant or the tax collector?

Here in Argentina the law says they must be rounded down. Initially it was for 5 AR$cents, and some shops still has the oficial sign that says AR$ 0.05.

We unofficially drop the coins/bills when the reach ~US$0.03, so now we dropped the AR$50 bills and everythig in cash is rounded down to AR$100 (US$0.07).

(The only exception is the photocopy shop 2 blocks away from home.)

Credit cards are charged the exact ammount, with cents that are irrelevant.

So, implement sales tax like Europe does VAT and include it in on the shelf price, and make sure all shelf prices end in 0 or 5. Then, adding up items in a cart will also end in 0 or 5, and the tax is already included, so there is no math beyond the addition that could change the total to anything ending in something that is not 0 or 5. No matter how people pay, cash or card, the price will be the same, and it will always end in 0 or 5. As an added bonus, customers don't have to wonder how much tax they'll pay, because that's already included in the price.

America is allergic to baked in taxes - you've got to keep the appearance of a deal even when there isn't one. America also embraces a lot of junk and hidden fees - ticketmaster is a great example of this.

I think consumers would love having baked in taxes and clear prices and were the government functional I'd hope that a consumer advocacy agency could enforce this - but that's simply not where we are right now.

Additionally, having baked-in taxes à la Japan would change how advertising works, since we don't have a uniform sales tax (unlike Japan). For example, I live in San Ramon, CA, which has a sales tax rate of 9.75%. If I drive just two miles north to Danville, the sales tax goes down to 8.75%. If I drive a few miles south to Dublin, the sales tax goes up to 10.25%. The reason is because California has a base statewide sales tax of 7.25% (with 1% of it going to local governments), and city and county governments are free to add up to 4% for local sales taxes.

By comparison, in Japan the consumption tax is 10% for most items (8% for groceries and takeout), and it's the same nationwide.

In addition, there are sometimes fees that are prohibited by law from being baked in. For example, California has a statewide ban on free "single-use" bags in grocery stores and some other businesses. These businesses are required to charge their customers for bags, and they are not allowed to bake it into the price. Some municipalities have extended this to disposable cups as part of an effort to discourage them in favor of reusable cups. For example, Santa Cruz mandates a 25 cent fee on disposable cups. The Costco $1.50 hot dog + drink combo is normally $1.50 + sales tax, but in Santa Cruz it's $1.50 + $.25 mandatory cup fee + sales tax (yes, the cup is taxable). I have yet to see someone bring a disposable cup to Costco or to other places where paper cups are sold, however.

Having baked-in taxes will require big changes about how taxes and fees work in America, the land of extra sales taxes, extra fees, surcharges, and tipping.

Some good news though - having baked in sales tax being required in advertising actually aligns marketing lobbying with pushing for harmonized sales taxes which I'd generally consider a more just system. IMO adding random regressive taxes in different counties to make up budget shortfalls causing very strange market effects is a bad thing.

America isn’t against baked in taxes because of the appearance of a deal, it’s because there is the large part of the population that is against _taxation_. Their argument (which is probably right) is that if you bake in the tax then it will be ignored by more buyers and it will be easier to raise.

Lots of odd American customs can be explained by this phenomenon. The other major difference in the states is that we don’t have many places that only have federal taxes. States and every locality from the county to the water reclamation board can have tax authority. Those 2 things in conjunction go a long way to explain the differences you see in US tax treatment.

You can do this with State taxes too, but I think your impression that people just ignore it is correct. A good example of this is gas prices. Gas in CA is 70c per gallon, vs about 25c per gallon in the Northeast. This gets baked into the price, and is way more expensive in CA, but people need to buy gas. So you just have to pay. And since it is everywhere in the state, most people don't notice the difference.

Penalizing the poor further?

Yes, let’s solve a tricky problem the hardest way possible.

> they'll continue holding pennies from previous years?

I think most of the ones from previous years are all in people's junk drawers, couches, etc., and only go back into circulation when someone decides to dump them into a Coinstar machine. Retailers are already reporting shortages.

I don't want to be glib, but hey what the hey. This is how you can see that the United States is in decline; it can no longer discontinue a coin through legislation.

Congress seems like the most dysfunctional branch of government going on a couple decades now.

They poll worse than the most unpopular presidents

> They poll worse than the most unpopular presidents

I would expect this to be the case generally since congress is at all times 99.5% people who you have no say in electing/recalling.

I happen to live in one of the few districts in CA that has a republican representative. I was looking forward to voting him out but then CA got gerrymandered and now we'll likely have a Democrat representative next term.

I didn't like our republican representative but it seems kinda shitty that the folks who did like him and voted for him suddenly didn't get a say in who their representative ought to be. I mean, sure they probably voted No on 50 but most of the yes votes came from outside of our district.

Edit: I strongly hate gerrymandering but I also acknowledge the need for the democrats to play dirty because the Republicans are, and "being the better person" doesn't seem to be a viable political strategy anymore.

The voters did get a say in California which at least had the process require a referendum.

The other states that have done mid cycle gerrymandering just forced it on their population.

Yeah, that's true, never thought of it that way. The way CA did it is certainly better, but I think it's still solving the wrong problem though — political power should not be able to be swayed by politicians moving borders around, with or without a vote. Redistricting is important because every district should have equal population, but they should be drawn by independent committees (and in many states they are, just for "some reason" a bunch of states decided to do it with a partisan spin).

The last time America discontinued a coin legislatively was the half cent about 150 years ago. That's a pretty long decline.

The US needed to discontinue the penny since at least the early 2010s; before you could argue it wasn't worth it. That's 25 years.

So, round down debit cards too? This seems like a really easy problem to solve.

SNAP is a major source of revenue for grocers so it seems like you wouldn't have to prod them very hard to do that.

They're all easily solvable problems. The issue, as GP mentioned, is that the pennies are just stopping without the thought through these problems and planning for the solutions. This was done via a social media post, not a well thought out transition like Canada had.

> The issue, as GP mentioned, is that the pennies are just stopping without the thought through these problems and planning for the solutions.

That's not an "issue". That's the way things that actually happen, happen.

If they're easily solvable then why do you need planning?

Changing the currency on a whim by executive fiat is stupid, but that's just principle. In practical terms, I really have a hard time caring about the problems this specific change creates.

> If they're easily solvable then why do you need planning?

Easily solvable problems still need coordination. Do you want to go to one store and have your change rounded up then go to another and have it rounded down?

Sure, who cares? This could already be happening today with rounding fractional pennies. I have no clue if stores round up, or down, or split at .5, or what. But obviously they're doing something, since there aren't physical fractional pennies and my card statements never show more than two decimal digits, so it's not a new problem. This would make the problem five times worse, but five times insignificant is still not something I'm going to worry about.

Charges take into account severity of the crime and intent. Nobody is going to get criminal charges for rounding pennies on cash transactions.

Sure, on paper. In reality bored fedcops trying to justify their budgets is how you get plenty of unjustifiable suffering.

The secret service probably won't cause a Waco out of it, but I'm sure they'll do something dumb.

Ok— Walmart decides to do something the government doesn’t like re:tariffs or whatnot. They can either plead fealty and retract their decision or the C-Suite can defend themselves against conspiracy to commit a zillion misdemeanors an hour…

Always round up (or down) to the nearest nickel regardless of whether someone pays card, cash, or SNAP. In effect, this would set the gross price as a multiple of 5 cents.

I fail to see the problem here. Just round the price for every type of transaction.

Ok so just round it down then

Can you not argue that the average is the same and thus the law isn’t violated?

Does the law say the average price must be the same, or does it say the price must be the same?

Reality: the supermarket does it the common sense way, and never gets sued, but if they do get sued, the outcome is "you must now refund 2 cents from every SNAP transaction you ever did"

Very unlikely that would happen. The way similar issues have been dealt with in the past is that settlement is negotiated to something "reasonable" (at least arguably so) and administrable. Probably the settlement amount would just go to a fund that the state would then distribute according to its priorities.

It's probably the case that the real risk is being suspended from SNAP for failing to comply with their rules.

No, because the law applies to individual transactions, not averages.

Tons of laws go unenforced

Generally in accounting, insignificant amounts are... insignificant (like how tax calculations are rounded to the dollar).

Please don't strawman this, there is ample evidence for rounding pennies on everyday transactions.

More annoying especially during the SNAP gap due to the shutdown the law forbids differential pricing in general so shops couldn't offer lower prices for EBT/SNAP customers as a way to help their neighbors.

Get rid of SNAP.

Problem solved.

(/s)

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