All there is to comprehend is that the US contains states that have distinct sales tax laws.
EDIT: I was correctly reminded that sales tax legislation can vary at the county and city level as well:
State Level: 45 states (plus Washington D.C.) have a statewide sales tax. The five states without a statewide sales tax are Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Alaska (though Alaska allows local sales taxes). Each of these 46 jurisdictions has its own base sales tax law, defining what is taxable, what is exempt, and how the tax is applied.
County Level: Many states allow counties to levy their own sales taxes, which are added on top of the state tax.
City/Municipal Level: Even more granularly, many cities and municipalities have their own sales taxes, added on top of state and county taxes.
Special District Level: This is where the complexity truly explodes. There are thousands of “special taxing districts” (e.g., transit districts, school districts, stadium districts, hospital districts, fire districts, etc.) that can overlap city and county lines, each adding its own fractional sales tax rate. A single street could literally have different sales tax rates on opposite sides due to these overlapping districts.
None of these a reasons the store, which posts it’s own prices and barcodes, can’t just include the total on the tag, or better yet set the price to the nearest whole number (or division of .10/.25) and take the tax out of that full amount. I know because I live in the midwest, I worked in retail/grocery store and our store piloted a test program of doing exactly that. Customers were incredibly happy and our overall sales actual went up because people who didn’t normally shop with us started to because it was easier to budget.
We got shut down by corporate beancounters who were freaking out because we were supposedly making less money. Except our sales and profits were up for the 8 weeks we demo’d the program and 4 weeks after we were forced to stop sales dropped below our year-on-year average. Literally forced to stop a program that benefited the customer and retailer because corporate greed couldn’t tolerate the customer not being screwed.
Prices tags are normally prepared using computers which are famously good at maths. Here in the UK, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have different rules for tax on certain products and yet everything is advertised with the final price.
All there is to comprehend is that the US contains states that have distinct sales tax laws.
EDIT: I was correctly reminded that sales tax legislation can vary at the county and city level as well:
State Level: 45 states (plus Washington D.C.) have a statewide sales tax. The five states without a statewide sales tax are Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Alaska (though Alaska allows local sales taxes). Each of these 46 jurisdictions has its own base sales tax law, defining what is taxable, what is exempt, and how the tax is applied.
County Level: Many states allow counties to levy their own sales taxes, which are added on top of the state tax.
City/Municipal Level: Even more granularly, many cities and municipalities have their own sales taxes, added on top of state and county taxes.
Special District Level: This is where the complexity truly explodes. There are thousands of “special taxing districts” (e.g., transit districts, school districts, stadium districts, hospital districts, fire districts, etc.) that can overlap city and county lines, each adding its own fractional sales tax rate. A single street could literally have different sales tax rates on opposite sides due to these overlapping districts.
None of these a reasons the store, which posts it’s own prices and barcodes, can’t just include the total on the tag, or better yet set the price to the nearest whole number (or division of .10/.25) and take the tax out of that full amount. I know because I live in the midwest, I worked in retail/grocery store and our store piloted a test program of doing exactly that. Customers were incredibly happy and our overall sales actual went up because people who didn’t normally shop with us started to because it was easier to budget.
We got shut down by corporate beancounters who were freaking out because we were supposedly making less money. Except our sales and profits were up for the 8 weeks we demo’d the program and 4 weeks after we were forced to stop sales dropped below our year-on-year average. Literally forced to stop a program that benefited the customer and retailer because corporate greed couldn’t tolerate the customer not being screwed.
There is zero reason that can’t be on the price tag.
There isn’t zero reason, you’re just unwilling to accept the reasons.
Prices tags are normally prepared using computers which are famously good at maths. Here in the UK, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have different rules for tax on certain products and yet everything is advertised with the final price.
I would love tax-included pricing (or maybe VAT?), though from what I know:
TV ads, sponsorship spots, circulars all complicate this.
So does Europe.
Europe is not a country, and Germany is not a state.
Germany certainly is a state if you use the right definition.
And counties that have their own sales taxes. So not even within the state is the rate the same.