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.
I am American and there is no benefit to not having the prices reflect after taxation, unless you’re some kind of big business where they screw over the patrons at the register like Walmart does.
The problem is that every location has different tax rates. For example here in Texas I pay 8 cents on the dollar where I live, but other locations have a city and/or a county tax which is added to the 8 cents per dollar state tax.
Its not that hard to print different price Tags. Here in Europe they even manage to print the packaging in different languages in the same chain one country over
My system acted up, so I reposted this as a reply to my reply.
I never said we were the smartest people in the world. But alas, like I said, we here are companies that will promote a price either on the shelf or in an ad and then when you get to the register and you’re not paying attention to prices ringing up, the price can be up to $3 USD higher than you saw.
Walmart is one that comes to mind for this really bad, not to mention if you have 2 or more stores in one town the prices will reflect differently based on its location in the city.
For example in my hometown we have 2 walmart stores. One on the east side and one on the west side. The east side, which is a poorer section of town, the prices are 3%-5% higher than the one on the west side which is more financial prosperous in income.
Their reasoning behind this is a simple case of this standing.
The east side store customer base buys things they need where those on the west side buys more things that they want. So they price gouge the customer base with less disposable income.
But shops sell the same items at a different prices anyway. It’s not like the manufacture sets the prices, the retailer does. You occasionally see RRP (recommended retail price) on the product packaging in the UK, but the price you pay is the price the shop lists. Surely in America each store has to print the price stickler/labels themselves, so I don’t understand why this is a valid reason.
I’m not demanding an explanation from you btw- thank you for the response, I appreciate the insight. I’m just genuinely confused to why this is way of pricing items is even allowed!
Unified marketing within a chain. McDonald’s and the like can advertise their $5 special nation wide and not have to worry about every locale’s specific tax.
We also have a metric shit tons of tax jurisdictions. Every state, county, city and special district can add their own tax. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are over 100,000 tax jurisdictions in the US. The people who set the price for a specific good don’t have to worry about tax cutting into the margin. That’s saved for someone else, usually a firm who specializes in tax calculations, at the point of sales.
The benefit is to the corporations. Tickets seem cheaper when you are planning, even though we all know it will be more expensive. Something to do with our dumb monkey brains
![[satire] Not the best advertisement for an accountant.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/08c3d02d-9bcd-4a5d-9a96-d31e854201ca.jpeg){kind=link}
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.
I am American and there is no benefit to not having the prices reflect after taxation, unless you’re some kind of big business where they screw over the patrons at the register like Walmart does.
The problem is that every location has different tax rates. For example here in Texas I pay 8 cents on the dollar where I live, but other locations have a city and/or a county tax which is added to the 8 cents per dollar state tax.
Its not that hard to print different price Tags. Here in Europe they even manage to print the packaging in different languages in the same chain one country over
deleted by creator
My system acted up, so I reposted this as a reply to my reply.
Walmart is one that comes to mind for this really bad, not to mention if you have 2 or more stores in one town the prices will reflect differently based on its location in the city.
For example in my hometown we have 2 walmart stores. One on the east side and one on the west side. The east side, which is a poorer section of town, the prices are 3%-5% higher than the one on the west side which is more financial prosperous in income. Their reasoning behind this is a simple case of this standing. The east side store customer base buys things they need where those on the west side buys more things that they want. So they price gouge the customer base with less disposable income.
But shops sell the same items at a different prices anyway. It’s not like the manufacture sets the prices, the retailer does. You occasionally see RRP (recommended retail price) on the product packaging in the UK, but the price you pay is the price the shop lists. Surely in America each store has to print the price stickler/labels themselves, so I don’t understand why this is a valid reason.
I’m not demanding an explanation from you btw- thank you for the response, I appreciate the insight. I’m just genuinely confused to why this is way of pricing items is even allowed!
Unified marketing within a chain. McDonald’s and the like can advertise their $5 special nation wide and not have to worry about every locale’s specific tax.
We also have a metric shit tons of tax jurisdictions. Every state, county, city and special district can add their own tax. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are over 100,000 tax jurisdictions in the US. The people who set the price for a specific good don’t have to worry about tax cutting into the margin. That’s saved for someone else, usually a firm who specializes in tax calculations, at the point of sales.
Imagine getting downvoted for a question
A pretty benign one at that, but oh well.
The benefit is to the corporations. Tickets seem cheaper when you are planning, even though we all know it will be more expensive. Something to do with our dumb monkey brains