Every time this is brought up Americans give this excuse.
The tesco express down the road has different prices for almost everything compared to the big tesco 200 metres away from it and yet somehow through the magic of modern technology can print different price labels to each other and have different prices in their database systems. It’s wild.
That’s not why. It could still be required that taxes are included in the price. Franchises jn different locations already have different prices anyway (you think the price for a Big Mac is the same in NYC as it is in a suburb in Ohio?)
It’s literally just so that businesses can advertise costs that are lower than what they are. Same reason Ticketmaster has 14 different convenience fees and tipping is a cultural norm rather than paying servers a living wage to begin with.
The reason is that politicians of a certain persuasion don’t want taxes to be “hidden.” They want them to be open and explicit to keep people angry at the government for taking so much of their money.
There is, in truth, also an advantage for retailers. They can advertise one price for the whole country, or a whole state or whatever, and not need to worry about the thousands upon thousands of different tax jurisdictions with not only different rates, but different categories that products and services can fall into.
For the consumer, it all means you have no fucking clue what you’ll actually end up paying.
![[satire] Not the best advertisement for an accountant.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/08c3d02d-9bcd-4a5d-9a96-d31e854201ca.jpeg){kind=link}
Habitual inclusion of sales tax but not other fees
At 15 per ticket it’s more like $42
it baffles me that tax isn’t included in the price. Here, what is on the sticker is how much you pay.
Every state and every city can have different tax rates, that’s why
Every time this is brought up Americans give this excuse.
The tesco express down the road has different prices for almost everything compared to the big tesco 200 metres away from it and yet somehow through the magic of modern technology can print different price labels to each other and have different prices in their database systems. It’s wild.
It’s not like we don’t have “deals” to make goods look cheaper than they are here either. You can still trick consumers while posting the true price.
That’s not why. It could still be required that taxes are included in the price. Franchises jn different locations already have different prices anyway (you think the price for a Big Mac is the same in NYC as it is in a suburb in Ohio?)
It’s literally just so that businesses can advertise costs that are lower than what they are. Same reason Ticketmaster has 14 different convenience fees and tipping is a cultural norm rather than paying servers a living wage to begin with.
Are you American? If so, would you prefer to have the price include all taxes up front, or is there some benefit of having prices listed like this?
The reason is that politicians of a certain persuasion don’t want taxes to be “hidden.” They want them to be open and explicit to keep people angry at the government for taking so much of their money.
There is, in truth, also an advantage for retailers. They can advertise one price for the whole country, or a whole state or whatever, and not need to worry about the thousands upon thousands of different tax jurisdictions with not only different rates, but different categories that products and services can fall into.
For the consumer, it all means you have no fucking clue what you’ll actually end up paying.
Australia has one tax rate for goods and services. It’s called the GST. Why can’t america do that?
Imagine getting downvoted for a question