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Comment by maaaats | Hacker News Reader

It's common in USA, because there are different sales taxes in different states. So advertised products are advertised without tax included in the price.

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It's limiting the ability for consumers to compare and it's opening the way for cheating, it's unhealthy for the market.

The advertised price has to be what the consumer will pay. I'm pretty sure some America guy got a Nobel prize in economics for discovering that.

I'd almost go so far as to say it's almost universal in the US. The main exceptions:

Gasoline (petrol) is always priced with all taxes included.

If the establishment is small enough that they're not using a register for cash transactions, they won't add tax. For instance if you buy a hot dog from a food cart for $4, that will be the whole price.

But for just about anything bought inside an actual store, tax will be added on.

It goes further than that; a county or even a town can have a separate sales tax. You can have 9% in one county, 10% in a city inside the county, or 8% the next county over.

And even beyond that, some governments levy different taxes on different items (e.g., lower tax on groceries), while other nearby governments may levy the same tax on everything.

Further, some governments charge tax on the pre-coupon/pre-discounted price, while others tax only the actual final price.

Further still, some entities like public schools are exempt from paying sales taxes in many states/municipalities. In this case, the price sign would have to show both a pre-tax and tax-included price on it, which may be the best solution anyway.

Regardless, these differences are probably easiest to account for at the point of sale.

A tangential, but this complexity is one reason I think that sales tax should largely be abolished in favor of rolling it into income taxes. The only context it makes much sense in is taxing various luxuries. Beyond that, it's confusing, adds administrative overhead, and discriminates towards those with lower incomes.

In some states it's required for sales tax to be listed as a separate line item. Gas is exempt from this.

Why are the price tags universal across all stores and all states, and centrally produced? Or if they aren't, surely each shop can print out their own price tags and add the appropriate tax then.

Price tags are one thing. The region-wide ads for Kroger saying "milk is on sale for $1.99/gal this week with your Kroger Card" are another. A broadcast TV ad like that might be visible in 10 or more different sales tax areas. Having worked in retail, I have several anecdotes from customers getting annoyed over even the smallest pricing discrepancies. I had one shopper complain about being charged less than the price in the mailed circular on the theory that the chosen product was of lesser quality than the advertised product.

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