In Germany the price advertised is the price paid. Not so in America due to taxes and fees.

One thing I like about Square from an independent merchant standpoint is that I can mark that an item's price should be considered to include all relevant taxes & fees. This allows for listing prices in round increments. This is more helpful for cash transactions because most people only cary bills so I mostly only have bills to hand back as change. It is easier for me to deal in whole dollar or at least quarter increments so I never have to worry about pennies, nickels or dimes. For cards, I can charge arbitrary amounts and it doesn't affect me or the customer at all. Granted, you have to do a little math up front for each item to ensure you're getting the right profit per sale, but it's negligible to the amount saved by not having to count change.

Germany has the VAT, they just require that vendors hide it from the consumer.

"Hide" as in "the calculation is done in multiple lines on each receipt with the amount of VAT clearly spelled out"? Germany has some hidden taxes in the supermarket (on alcohol, tobacco, and coffee) but VAT is absolutely visible.

VAT is part of the itemized receipt. More importantly, as the parent says, advertised prices must include VAT. This is different from the US, where sales tax is added as a last step, and advertised prices are always excluding tax.

> Berlin...have rounded prices for everything

That's rarely the case. I can only think of dm (a drugstore) which rounds all prices in 5 cent increments. Otherwise you see a lot of prices ending in 8 or 9.

Yes, dm's prices are great. That's one of the reasons why I prefer it over Rossmann and Müller.

Also, there are several chains (Netto, Rewe, Kaufland, etc.) where you can round up your total to the next-higher multiple of 10 cents, and the difference goes to charity. I always use that if possible to avoid Buntmetall (i.e., 1/2 cent coins).

Cards used to be more convenient in the US. But once they started putting in the chips the verification process takes ages. I can complete the whole transaction in cash in the time it takes the chip reader to get itself sorted.