This assertion is wrong. If the item you buy is $1.00, then after your 14% tax it will be $1.14, which is rounded up to $1.15. If the item is $2.00, then after tax it is $2.28, which also rounds up to $2.30. But if the item is $3.00, then after tax it is $3.42, which rounds down to $3.40. If the item is $4.00, then after tax it is $4.56, which rounds down to $4.55.
Secondly, the rounding to nearest nickel is done per transaction, not per item. So if you go to a supermarket and pick up 3 items costing exactly $1.00, then the total you owe is $3.42 (which becomes $3.40 in cash), and it is that amount that is subjected to rounding, not the individual items (which are $1.13 and would round to $1.15).
I live in Toronto and have analyzed my retail receipts. (I'm aware the HST is currently 13% but that's not relevant to this argument.) The rule about rounding to the nearest nickel is sensible enough, but I've witnessed various weird behaviors. For example, each vendor has a different kind of wording to show how they rounded your cash transaction. Some use a negative sign to show that the penny rounding deducted money from your total owed, while some use a negative sign to show that the penny rounding increased your total owed (as if you paid negative money). Also, a few vendors always round down to the nearest 5 cents (to appear nice to the customer), which causes a surprise when I'm trying to prepare the correct amount of change. Finally, some vendors don't display cash rounding on their receipts, so for them it is an oral culture that isn't formally written down.
¹ it was so that the effective tax rate remained the same when Quebec stopped taxing the federal tax, which was pretty annoying for software.
You already have this in some sense on gas pumps: the price advertised has taxes included so you are not always playing guess-the-final-total with your money. Just pass a law that requires fair advertising of the actual amount the purchaser will pay, taxes etc. included. If there are special circumstances that might make certain people exempt from a tax -- SNAP is sales-tax free, for instance -- there are several ways to handle that but it's clearer when phrased as a discount rather than as an evasion of a tax.
However, the reason I think stores do this is: If store A is selling candy bars for $1 (+ $0.05 tax at register) and store B is selling candy bars for $1.05. Most people would buy their candy from store A because their prices are lower.
The situation where it comes up is the idea of an American VAT. Because it applies the tax before the store even sees the good, the tax ends up baked into the price. And people like Grover Norquist have argued against a VAT specifically because of that: "The VAT is embedded inside the price of a good (as opposed to the U.S., where sales tax is transparent and on top of the price). As such, people forget they pay it, and European governments have found it too easy to raise the tax repeatedly over time."
If the business did not collect taxes then you the customer owe that to the state still and are suppose to self report that and pay the owed taxed annually
This is the same as Tax withholding from a paycheck, you owe the taxes but your employer is collecting and forwarding them to the government on your behalf, the big difference here is the purchases are not tracked by individual tax payer
Interesting. But do people actually do this in practice? I wonder if states report what percentage of sales tax comes from businesses vs individuals.
Before 2018 or 2019 unless a business had a physical presence in the state it was outsize the reach of that states laws on taxation, as the Federal government has the exclusive domain of regulating interstate transactions under the US Constitution.
However in 2018 or 2019 the Supreme court has ruled that a business shipping into a state provides enough "nexus" for a business to fall under state regulations on sales tax collection. All but one state now require any business shipping a product into the state with a total sales volume of more than $600 for that state must collect sales tax, one state says any sales at all you must collect.
So the "loop hole" of buying from out of state to avoid state sales taxes no longer exist as almost all businesses now need to collect all taxes for all taxing jurisdictions in the US of which there are around 10,000 different tax jurisdictions as many area's have city and/or county level taxes in addition to the state taxes making this is very complex issue
Companies like Amazon and Walmart in the past have advocated for some kind of National Standardization of Sale Taxes but that largely has gone no where as many states make up the majority of their revenue from 2 places, Property Taxes and Sales Taxes where the majority of Income Taxes go to the Federal Government
>>I wonder if states report what percentage of sales tax comes from businesses vs individuals.
Most states do have detailed reports of where sales taxes come from, in my state over 70% of sales taxes come from the sale of Automobiles as an example
One exception is in advertised gasoline prices, which usually include all the taxes, including sales tax and special gasoline taxes.
I doubt if most price tags last more than a month at clothing stores, maybe a year at grocery/other large chain stores. Department stores and trendy fashion stores have too many sales and don't keep the same items in stock year round anyways.
Almost every other country in the world works fine without bait'n'switching their citizens at every single transaction.
I get that it's weird if you aren't used to it, but it really isn't the big deal people (that don't have to even deal with it) make it out to be.
"Just" anything in America is as OP pointed out an absolute nightmare left-vs-right debacle.
The "left" wants to have inclusive pricing for, as you point out, convenience and sanity while politicians on the "right" want to have taxes appended afterwards so that you are smacked in the face with how much the government is wasting your money every time you buy anything.
Every business should be requried to adversite, print, and clearly mark the amount of the tansaction is going to taxation
Hiding taxation in the purchase price allows government to increase those tax rights with out facing the same amount of public back lash as they do when the taxation is calculated secretly from the transaction or advertised rate
This is why when come taxes increase their gas takes the hate and vitriol is directed at the "evil gas companies" increasing the rates when in reality it was a increase in gas taxation that cause the per gallon price to increase
One of the primary reasons I oppose a VAT style tax in the US is the vert nature of non-transparent taxation. People need to know exactly how much money the government is taken from them in any given transaction
People should have to actively hand over money to the government, see the money in their account, and then see it removed for the exact purpose of government taxation
This is the only way to hold government to account for their massive overspending, which today is abstracted away to the point that people believe their tax refund check is the "government paying me money" instead of what is really is, the government taking to much money from you and then giving you back what they over seized
Any abstraction in government funding is a negative for government accountability
If people had to physcially spend a payment larger than their mortgage every month to the government they would quickly start to ask "Why I am paying so much" and "what am i actually getting for this money"
Instead the government slyly takes the money before people even realize they had it, sure they get a pay stub but it is not "real money" that was ever in their physical possession, most people do not even look at their Gross income only the amount physically put into their bank account.
This subtle difference is factored into how government has structured taxation to ensure very limited accountability
That's exactly what happens in Europe, the receipt tells you exactly how much you paid for each of tax and goods.
It's actually illegal there to set prices such that they will generally round in the business's favor? Talk about micromanaging…
If they change the tax rates do you have to update your prices so that they round evenly again?
A fairer policy might be "round random" (e.g. 1.23 rounds to 1.20 40% of the time and to 1.25 60% of the time, since .23 is 60% of the way from .20 to .25). That would be harder to game by manipulating the prices. However, you would need to certify that the rounding was actually random; the result wouldn't be obviously correct for any particular transaction, only in aggregate.
I don't see why this would be different. Most likely there would be a law that covers it. (I believe there already is regarding sales tax)
either you're way too optimistic, or i'm way too pessimistic, but lemme tell you, we do not see eye-to-eye on that point.
Concretely, $1.20 with 7% tax is $1.284, do you believe merchants would charge you $1.29?
That said, do I think that someone, somewhere, has/does/will out of malice abuse this specific oft-ignored dark corner of the marketplace, for personal gain? Yeah, I absolutely think that:
3-4 cents isn't a lot. Unless it's added up by all of the people shopping in those places over the course of a year. The incentive to cheat the system is there, therefore the system will 100% be cheated. That's The American Way, in my experience.
This kind of fraud would be so easy to detect I just can't see it occurring on any large scale. The problem would be with small "mom and pop" businesses that could do it for some time without being noticed.
And even if they do always round up: It won't be that much - up to 4 cents per transaction. 125 transactions would only cost you $5 per month - and besides, businesses have actual costs to using cash. No pennies means less time handing out and counting change and less change to get from the bank. Not to mention the savings at the government level.
- Prices are rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5 cents for sales ending in: 1¢ & 2¢ (rounded to 0¢); and 6¢ & 7¢ (rounded to 5¢).
- Prices are rounded up to the nearest multiple of 5 cents for sales ending in: 3¢ & 4¢ (round to 5¢); and 8¢ & 9¢ (round to 10¢).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_rounding#Rounding_with_0....
I share GP's assumption, assuming that businesses would re-price based on the final cost. There is a financial incentive to get the transaction to round up, and financial incentives are usually pretty motivating.
(Given the max incentive is 5 cents per transaction, I might guess a focus on one-off transactions like a bag of chips, vs. the complexity of attempting to get the average grocery bill to end in the right #!)
Would be interesting to see if the after-tax prices of potential single items (chips, water, pop) changed with this rule. Anything that was 99 cents, now that HST is 13%, comes to 111.8 cents, rounds to 110 cents. Bumping that to 100 cents even, rounds to 113, rounds up to 115. Profit of 5 cents on '99c/1$' item for 5% difference. Hard margins to give up!
Everybody who lived the transition to the Euro knows that this is not what will happen. Prices will be always rounded up.
I don't understand the big fuss over rounding in the discussion of eliminating the penny. Rounding happens. We already round sales tax up or down to the nearest penny--this would just round up or down to the nearest nickel.
But while we are on the subject, I think we should eliminate nickels and quarters at the same time as the penny and just round to the nearest dime. (Let's put the 50 cent piece of of its misery while we are at it too--just dollars and dimes). Rounding to the nearest ten cents is plenty specific enough given the accumulated inflation/devaluation of currency over the years and you basically get to simply knock off one decimal digit of precision for each transaction which makes things more straightforward. Also, US dimes are small and lightweight, making them easy to carry relative to other coins.
You forgot quarters, which are perhaps the most common coin. How about we eliminate pennies, nickles, dimes, half-dollars, and dollar bills, and just use quarters and dollars?
Making change would require an average of 4.5 dimes, with a maximum of 9 that happens 10% of the time. Currently 9 coins are required only for 99 and 94 cents. (That's without half dollars, if you use them then it's only 8). If you have dimes and half dollars, it's an average of 2.5 and a max of 5.
Also, US dimes are small and lightweight
I find them to be too small. I like the simplicity of removing a decimal place, but I'd prefer penny-sized dimes and quarter-sized half dollars.
If we assume it takes about 15 seconds to chug a bud, and that an eagle's wingspan is about 6ft, this leads to 528ft/15s, or ~24Mph.
Either you need a faster car, you chug your beer quickly, or you grow some oversized eagles.
I choose to assume the man meant what he said, has a slowish car that can only hit 75mph, but can chug a beer in a respectable 5 seconds.
You'd think, but actually no. That's because it's per transaction, so the accumulated amount is well pennies compared to the turnover.
For example, say you always rounded in favor of the company. That means an average of 2c gain per transaction. If you do 2 million transactions a day that's... 40 grand! yay. Except that if the average transaction is say $50 (which seems kinda low) that means your turnover for the day was $100 million.
So, in short, if you are making a lot from the rounding error, well you're making a lot lot from the actual sales.
I don't think that seems low. A grocery store or a bakery probably sees a lot of transaction in the 2$ to 5$ range.
But, to be fair, even at 'only' 4 million $ turnover your point still stands.
Corner stores have the occasional sub-$5 purchase, as do, of course, coffee shops.
This might also be a currency difference, through; 5 Euro in Germany can get you quite far (at least outside of metropolitan areas).
Are you sure? I did a quick search and came up with this
>One of the rules in Regulation NMS is a new Sub-Penny Rule: “which establishes a uniform quoting increment of no less than one penny for quotations in NMS stocks equal to or greater than $1.00 per share to promote greater price transparency and consistency. . . . In particular, Rule 612 addresses the practice of “stepping ahead” of displayed limit orders by trivial amounts. It therefore should further encourage the display of limit orders and improve the depth and liquidity of trading in NMS stocks.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/sub-penny-pricin...
which suggests the opposite of what you're claiming. Also, I'm not sure how you'd even make money this way, considering that NBBO requires brokers to execute their customer's trades at the best available price.
If the best price of a stock on exchanges is $25.00, but an HFT can buy it at $24.99 on a dark pool, they could buy it cheaper and sell it to you, and pocket the difference. When they pay your broker for the privilege of doing so, it's called payment for order flow. As a retail trader you have no visibility or access to dark pools.
Aside from dark pools, NBBO updates have latency which may be exploited:
http://strategicreasoning.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ec3...
Not matter how they do it, the fact that they are willing to pay your broker to execute your order is proof that they have some way to make money from your orders.
You are correct that brokers are required to execute customer trades at the best available price aka the NBBO. The issue here is that the NBBO is relatively slow as compared to data feeds offered by various exchanges and many brokers use the NBBO simply to satisfy Reg NMS Rule 603(c)[1].
If price data was able to travel instantaneously then the NBBO might represent the true best price(s). But the laws of physics say it isn't so and orders can be executed at a less-than-best price yet still at or better than the NBBO.[2]
Fortunately, more are aware of this these days including the SEC which released a proposed order calling for exchanges to submit revised NMS Plans for consolidated data earlier this year.[3]
A great summary of how money is made with all of this I highly recommend giving this a read: http://www.nanex.net/aqck2/What-Every-Retail-Investor-Needs-...
[0]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/242.612 [1]: https://www.sec.gov/comments/4-729/4729-4560068-176205.pdf [2]: https://iextrading.com/docs/The%20Evolution%20of%20the%20Cru... [3]: https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/nms/2020/34-87906.pdf
You do realize you’re being guilty of exactly what you’re decrying in American politics? You’re over analyzing a minuscule impact that would result from a change to the status quo.
Personally, I think it makes accounting more annoying for businesses. I say leave the penny as it is, and move everyone to plastic.
My wife's Canadian and I'm American, and we've discussed this point too. My theory is that Canada's parliamentary system generally puts one party in charge of the executive and legislative, so it's easier for that party to get things done. Of course there are times when a party in the US controls both branches and we still struggle to get things done. I would assume that most larger changes happens on this scenarios though.
And of course the US seems to suffer from partisanship in general more than Canada, but I can't back that up.
Canada generally has at least three official political parties (more than 12 seats in the house) at any given time. Currently there are four. You need the most seats but not necessarily a majority of seats to form a government. If a party has fewer than 50%, they form what's called a minority government.
Next big piece is the motion of no confidence, which means we can have an election literally whenever if a government can't pass legislation.
So combine the chance of minority governments and more voices and platforms in government the possibility that obstruction can actually cause you to, you know, lose your job, and you get natural checks against a lot of the problems on display in American federal politics right now. If you can't pass a budget, you don't get a federal shutdown until you negotiate one, you get an election triggered immediately. I understand why no confidence would be practically impossible in America due to money and insanely long election cycles, but it really helps form coalitions and collaboration in Canadian politics.
No, that's when a political party _or_ a coalition of parties does not have the majority. Netherlands often/always has a coalition / combination of parties. They're never considered a minority government unless the combination is <50%.
So in practice, the PM of a majority gov't (i.e., has a majority of seats) gets to pass whatever they want to pass; the saving grace of this is that, without having to haggle and herd cats and trade horses, the legislation is the legislation--there's no poison pills, no payoff amendments, no loopholes to capture one person's support, and no extreme bits to trade away. It's just "this is the law we want", which I think leads to higher quality legislation over all.
The PM of a minority gov't (i.e., only has a plurality of seats) may have to secure another party's vote to pass, but that's a negotiation with a second entity, not a hundred other voting entities.
Consensus doesn't play a significant part in it, I believe. Within the bounds of the law, the PM of a majority is nearly a polite dictator.
In a parliament majority, the buck stops with the Prime Minister and win or lose his performance is on the line in the next election. There's no (effective) hand-waving about opposition or other excuses to deflect accountability. Elections are a black/white referendum of the incumbent's performance.
In the US it's a lot easier to muddy the waters and a lot harder for people to arrive at a clear conclusion and often nobody is happy.
"YES I don't like X BUT it wasn't Y's fault it was Z"
No, I'm not. The concept of a party whip literally invented where I'm from. I'm very much familiar with it.
The US system is much more adversarial. Even if a single party gets the house, senate and presidency, there isn't much stopping individual party members from voting against the party line.
It's true consensus is need with a coalition/minority government, but they don't seem to happen that often. Yes, I know there is one right now.
Proportional representation is almost a necessary condition for the parliamentary system to encourage consensus-building. More specifically, it's necessary that no party hold an absolute majority.
With first-past-the-post, you usually end up with one party having full control for one term, and no one to hold them accountable (particularly if you have the principle of parliamentary soverignity).
With some of the NI parties screwing over conservative governments its why NI doesn't have the same laws as the UK
[Aside: An interesting consequence of this is that England lacks a legal and political identity separate from the UK as the UK is an _extension_ of the Kingdom of England. Another interesting this is that even though it was part of the Kingdom of England, Wales _does_ have a legal and political identity because there are acts of parliament that _explicitly_ refer to it. The UK is a constitutionally odd country.]
It's the party discipline. In Canada political parties control the fundraising apparatus and you can't be bankrolled by a handful of wealthy donors. Barring unusual circumstance, if you want to be re-elected you are beholden to a party and thus the whips generally have a strong ability to bring votes to the table.
In the states its a lot easier for a Republican or Democrat to tell their party to go fly a kite if they don't see voting for a bill as opportune, in part because of less reliance on the party.
I actually liked the US approach when I first arrived - "how great! everyone is passionate about politics!". I find it somewhat draining now. There is almost no part of life (work, friends, random strangers) where politics doesn't come up.
I think you’re not describing real political passion or engagement, though — Americans can get quite worked up about politics but we’re not all that engaged, or passionate enough to lobby for real change. Politics serve as signs of tribal affiliation and self-identity, and sometimes as a way to bludgeon other people. In that sense talking about politics is similar to, and as pointless as, arguing about sports. We (Americans) actually don’t show much real engagement if you look at voter turnout.
My other pet theory is that Canadians get more than enough politics from Canadian coverage of US politics (it's often 30%+ of news coverage) so they feel little urge to do the same with domestic politics.
On one hand, beneficial change can be painstakingly slow. On the other, malevolent change can be stymied indefinitely
Edit: clarify my statement was in reference to the US
I used to think so, but as I read more about the founding fathers I’m beginning to think they had all the same personality conflicts we have today. Maybe there’s a case that with today’s media our current reps are more accountable to their constituents, but (superficially at least) most would interpret that as a good thing
I think it's a feature. We seem to move a lot faster and it doesn't always work, but for the most part, having MPs as the executive branch allows people at the top to legislate what they need to succeed.
When the party that made the "malevolent" change is kicked out, then whatever they did can be reverted very easily.
Contrast that with: if passing anything is hard, and a "malevolent" change does manage to be rammed through somehow (e.g., one party controls things for a two-year period), then reversing it will also be very difficult.
Somewhat humorous example: In response to the need for warm clothing in the Korean War, US lawmakers instituted an alpaca subsidy in 1952. This subsidy remained in place for over 40 years.[1]
I do think there’s evidence that your second statement is true. Bad policy takes a lot of political will to overturn.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=fV_SuDMHpOsC&pg=PA273&lpg=...
Probably because you're only thinking about it from a US-centric POV.
As a Canadian who lives under a Westminster-style style system, there tends to be less gridlock here under majority governments.
I personally think it was deliberately put intended as a check/balance. Af the far end of spectrum, the most “efficient” form of government is a dictatorship. I’m not sure if what the US has is the correct balance, though.
In practice, no one gives a shit because it's a penny and no one cares about the penny. QED
FYI Sales tax is 13% in Ontario now
I don't think you thought that through. Unless you are going to require prices be rounded to the nearest dollar, you still need pennies or even fractional pennies to accurately pay the tax. 15% of 75 cents is 11.25 cents, for instance.
The last state I lived in where I looked closely at the sales tax structure had a table like this for which penny to round up or down to. It eliminated all formulas and ambiguity.
When you pay for something electronically, the rounding rules don't apply. If my bill comes to $10.42, I can save two cents by paying cash thanks to the rounding rules. But if it comes to $10.98, I save two cents by paying electronically.
That’s about where the USA is as well. Cash is used in 31% of consumer transactions. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/06/spike-the-dollars-obit-cash-...
Anecdotally I haven’t carried cash around in years.
Generally I keep a $40 in the wallet just in case there is a cash-only situation, but that's literally just a backup -- 99% of transactions are on some kind of card.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
>Sayre's law states, in a formulation quoted by Charles Philip Issawi: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake." By way of corollary, it adds: "That is why academic politics are so bitter." Sayre's law is named after Wallace Stanley Sayre (1905–1972), U.S. political scientist and professor at Columbia University.
I imagine I will see this in my lifetime.
Though, since I rarely handle change at all — if I do use cash, I usually find the first place near my hand to donate whatever metal comes back to me - I suppose I’m not the target audience anyway.
I think it would be a fine to drop the penny and nickel from circulation, just let it become an obscure unit.
And for anyone who thinks otherwise, I'm going for a swim with $300 in my pocket.
There are absolutely better materials to use, no argument there. But US paper currency are not even close to being fragile.
Much better than in the USA, where their cloth money always feels like dirty laundry.
Uggh. When I travel in Europe--especially Germany with its remaining heavy use of cash--I hate coinage that is sufficiently valuable that I can't just basically ignore it. The US seriously tried to do a dollar coin (the Susan B. Anthony)--which was arguably ill-conceived for at least a couple of reasons but I'm very happy with US coinage being basically loose change although I'd be happy to eliminate basically disposable pennies and maybe even nickels.
Though to tell the truth I normally use cash so seldom and/or at so few places in the US that it probably doesn't matter.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_coin_(United_States)#Sa...
Funny, that's basically the inverse of the reason I liked it — it allowed me to ignore cash some time.
The wonders of search helped me find my old comment without scrolling, here's more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22502882
Money isn't waterproof where you live?
British, Canadian, Australian bank notes can't be ripped when wet or dry - they're polymer.
This 100%. Quebec is the worst - 9.975%! Why oh why. It is so much simpler to have reasonable change in alberta.
Source: I write point of sale systems in Canada
In the US, the States are very powerful and the Federal government is much weaker comparatively. For anything to be done collectively across the entire US, it requires cooperation from all states, otherwise one of them can screw everything up. That inherently means more talking, more coordination, more meetings, etc.
It's the fundamental difference in how each country was forme and the system that they pursued. In some ways it's better and in some ways its worse. That's why you can have very powerful states like California dictate a lot of their own destiny, but then when it comes time for a national crisis like a pandemic, everything is fucked because the US Federal government doesn't have the same level of control and power as in Canada. In Canada you didn't get the inane policy of each province buying its own PPE like in the States, driving up prices because they are all fighting each other.
In canada, health care is the sole responsibility of the province. The federal government helps with planning and coordination (and maybe funding) You didnt get the insanity because the individial provinces are mostly sane. You still saw individual differences, especially look at ontario's early response.
Very few states maintained their supply of medical equipment properly. Likewise, the federal government hasn't restocked much equipment since the early? Obama administration. Unfortunately, it just wasn't made much of a priority. Of course this failure was made even more devastating due to massive global misinformation leading to late decisions and poor communication by entities that should have been more trustworthy and better equipped.
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With that said, the states rights debate is a tough nut to crack. There's been so many instances of (various) governments doing evil things that I'm not sure I'd want to centralize even more power.
It's an extreme example, but I liken it to letting a Mao or Hitler take complete control for the benefit of a better healthcare system. The cost is just too great.
True, but part of me still misses it. Not for any real functional reasons. The rounding issue is really nothing and seems to work out pretty evenly from what I can tell, not that I've really bothered to try and figure it out.
I guess it's more sentimental reasons really. It feels odd not being able to count cash to an exact cent. You can now only hold cash up to the nearest 5¢, again not a big deal, but it just makes cash feel more second class. Then there's things like those fountains people would toss pennies into, or the whole find a penny pass it on for good luck thing, or the various phrases involving pennies. 'A penny for your thoughts and such'. These are all things that'll kind of vanish from public thought.
I dunno, these are just some things i've thought of over the years since they got rid of pennies.
That only lasted a few years until they changed it to always "round up" - i.e. it always goes up to 0.05.
For what it's worth, dropping the $0.01 coin is great, every time I'm in the US I try to avoid them like the plague.
Better to make the advertised price include sales tax so there's no surprise at the checkout.
Also, the rounding algorithm is in the article you linked to:
> If the price ends in a one, two, six, or seven it gets rounded down to 0 or 5; and rounded up if it ends in three, four, eight or nine.
That tends to work out pretty even for consumer/store if you are buying groups of randomly priced items.
When Australia ditched the 1 and 2 cent coins, making 5 cents the smallest denomination, the rules were that transactions ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7 were to be rounded down to 0 or 5, respectively, and that 3, 4, 8 or 9 were rounded up, and that this was to be done at the _transaction_, not the _item_ level.
Several companies and utilities had to be reprimanded or fined due to doing it per item.
I think that is primarily a function of having three rather than two major political parties. With three parties, any party that can be on the other side of a controversial issue from the other two tends to win the argument. Hence, we're a lot more biased for action at the government level.
Sounds like you know why that is, because people don't want to be stuck carrying around big coins.
>Side note: If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5. 5%, 10%, 15%, etc... Since Canada changed but left the taxes the same (14% in Ontario IIRC) there seems to be a lot of rounding-off in favour of companies instead of consumers. $0.01-$0.02 per transaction * millions of transactions per day has got to make some accountants happy.
Over the billions of dollars spent in a state per quarter, you are either seriously screwing consumers, or seriously reducing state government revenue. I'd really hate my 6% sales tax to be raised to 10% so that we could kill a coin I don't even use (last paid cash probably a year ago).
If you're paying in plastic then there's no rounding.
>If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5. 5%, 10%, 15%, etc.
Which I assumed wouldn't be just for paying with cash. I don't know if a 'cash tax' would even be legal.
Canada stopped producing pennies in the fall of 2012. [0] The sky didn't fall. There was no great debate, no public opinion polls and politicians swearing heartily about the demise of our great nation. (Ok that's probably not true. For too many politicians that's all they do.)
There was resistance when Canada dropped the $1 bill in favour of a Loonie (a $1 coin with the image of a loon on it). People bitched about having too much change in there pocket, pockets became too heavy, etc. I do however see more coins in tip & donation jars now then I ever saw paper money.
This is a key difference between US policy & Canadian policy that I have informally noticed while growing up on the border (with family ties on both sides).
Canadian government: We think it's a good idea, so we're going to do it.
US Government: Lets have more opinion polls, and countless politicians swearing against any decent public reform or change to the status quo. Watch the media whip the public up into a frenzy. I guaranty that this will create a more frantic response and airtime then the BLM & Police Reform protests did.
Side note: If you drop the penny, for the love of $diety change your sales tax structure so that it's a multiple of 5. 5%, 10%, 15%, etc... Since Canada changed but left the taxes the same (14% in Ontario IIRC) there seems to be a lot of rounding-off in favour of companies instead of consumers. $0.01-$0.02 per transaction * millions of transactions per day has got to make some accountants happy.
[0]https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-s-penny-withdrawal-all...