It's insisted upon by anti-tax advocates, so that Americans always get reminded about exactly how much the government is adding onto the price. Otherwise, the theory goes, we would get too happy about taxes.

That happened in Washington state when Costco sponsored a privatization initiative to allow liquor to be sold by private stores and abolish the state stores. The private stores started advertising the non-tax price with tiny print saying that tax would be added at the register (when the state sold liquor, the price on the shelf included all liquor taxes). People were pissed thinking that the state had been ripping them off until they got to the register and found that the price was pretty much what they paid before. Actually they were paying a bit more, most people didn't read the initiative before voting on it. Now the stores print the total price in their advertisements.

the bigger reason people voted to change that was to expand hours of access - and selection, which were pretty limited before.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think there is any law that says businesses have to add sales tax on separately. Since it's the business who actually pays the tax not the consumer they could just take it out of their own profits.

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.

Sometimes stores will structure sales that way ("we pay the sales tax" sales), so I expect you're right.

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."

https://humanevents.com/2010/04/23/dont-give-obama-a-vat/

I love how the argument being played is that VAT is used to fed a big government. Like the US is huge, it requires a large government..

Business collect and remit taxation on behalf of the customer, so no the business is not "paying" the taxes. It is the consumer that owes them the business is just collecting them for the government. For which the business gets a small fee to do this service for the government.

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

> 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

Interesting. But do people actually do this in practice? I wonder if states report what percentage of sales tax comes from businesses vs individuals.

In practice no people do not generally self report that is why there has been several high profile law suits from states wanting online businesses to collect state sales taxes on all sales shipped into the state

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

Of course they don't. That's why Jeff Bezos is a $100Billionaire and why people drive across state lines to go shopping.

Being in favor of transparency in taxation isn't the same as being "anti-tax".

Taxes are computed at the cashier because tax rates vary from state to state and city to city. If sales taxes were uniform then we would see more advertised prices including tax.

One exception is in advertised gasoline prices, which usually include all the taxes, including sales tax and special gasoline taxes.

But why is it possible for gasoline, and not for other items?

Gas stations sell 1 product, whose price changes daily.

Gasoline prices change daily and from one station to the next. So gasoline advertisements never include prices.

At a gas station, they have between one and four prices (diesel, regular, premium, and premium plus, or whatever your station calls it). So it’s easy for them to adjust those four numbers. At a grocery store selling thousands or tens of thousands of items, it’s a huge task to set the price tag for each item. So instead (or so I’ve heard), prices tags are produced by the grocery store’s corporate office. This would be much more difficult to do if the price had to vary from town to town. Suppose this grocery store chain has a hundred stores. Instead of making ten thousand tags 100 times, you have to make 10 million tags entirely uniquely. This is even more difficult for things like clothes where the price is on a tag physically attached to the garment. Imagine if the sales tax went down in that town; every single article of clothing would need to be relabeled.

The price tags come on a 8.5x11 sheet, just like address labels. A stack arrives (monthly? Weekly? Not sure) from corporate in an envelope. I'm not sure what happens when the tag gets lost; fortunately those are usually the handwritten signs falling into carts. Price tags really should just be printed at the store.

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.

I assume menu prices also different from state to state, city to city. Not sure I see the issue.

It makes it impossible to do mass marketing with prices. Best Buy can send a flyer saying "Xbox One Only 199.99!" to everyone in Illinois. But if they had to include tax, it would be 219.99 or 214.99 depending on which side of my town you live in because they tax rate changes.

This is an argument for less levels of taxation, ie sales tax should only be at state and not county level.

Almost every other country in the world works fine without bait'n'switching their citizens at every single transaction.

The thing is though, it isn't bait and switch. Everyone know exactly what it happening. I remember learning it when I was 7 - it isn't difficult.

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.

The biggest reason is that sales tax can be applied at the state level, then a county can add a bit more, and a city a bit more still. So for a national chain it's impossible to know the final price to put on an item until the consumer gets to the checkout register.