It's even enshrined into law in some states and locales. A few businesses have tried to market themselves as "no-nonsense, no-bullshit" and put the right prices on things, but that's totally illegal in parts of the US.

It's illegal to put on the price the customer is actually going to pay? My search attempt failed ("illegal to put price with VAT" neither g nor ddg liked it), please tell me more!

In fact, there was a wine store in New York City that tried to post the real prices and had some legal issues, so they would post _both_ the "price before tax" and the actual price (in some format that allowed them to evade the laws, so stupid).

I now live in the Netherlands. All prices are what you pay, _and_ the receipt breaks down how much of that goes to taxes, which I think is completely logical.

> I now live in the Netherlands.

In the EU it's illegal to show prices ex VAT (or other components that might make up the final selling price) to non-business/commercial consumers.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/1998/6/oj

I think, showing the taxes separately is a very good idea in principle, so that you know how much tax you are paying. I usually hate the fact that I can not see how much tax I am paying, although, in Germany, the amount of tax is shown in the checkout pages.

The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker? I'd argue no - it's not like you can opt to not pay it. I assume your sales tax works like ours (Poland), i.e. per product/service category, so it's also not like you can buy a substitute product with lower tax.

I like the solution we have - price stickers have full price, and printed receipts carry tax breakdown.

Bizarre though it may sound, some politicians in America are in favour of badly designed tax systems, for anti-tax reasons.

By making tax as difficult as possible, they recruit supporters for their anti-tax stance, and they can claim they're delivering on their anti-tax policy by 'making the system collapse under its own weight' or 'making everyone aware of how much tax they're paying' and they can allow loopholes and fraud opportunities and they can collect donations from tax preparation companies.

It's the same here in Germany as well, was also the same in Greece and Turkey. I guess the whole Europe is like this, if not everywhere except the US :)

> The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker

Especially considering the fact that usually there are 2-3 rates tops, so one can easily remember that 5-10-20% of what they pay goes to the country coffers depending on the product being bought.

I can think of at least one reason where tax calculated on the final total vs each price is better (for the consumer), rounding. With tax calculated on the final total, you pay at most $0.01 extra in rounding “errors”. However with tax calculated on each price you pay at most number of items times $0.01, which is more and could add up over time. I personally want to give the gov as little of my money as possible.

That depends on whether they're rounding, or taking a floor or ceiling :). With proper rounding, it's a wash. I just did some back-of-the-dev-console calculations on a random groceries receipt I found on my desk, and I discovered that if the tax was calculated per item, I'd pay 0.01PLN less of it!

Regardless of the rounding method, the fair way is to sum up purchases and compute tax on the total, precisely to minimize the loss of precision on rounding.

Curiously, as far as I understand the Polish tax code (IANAL), the choice of the method to use is actually given to the vendor! The law recommends[0] that you calculate the tax by multiplying the rate with the total taxable amount, but also allows[1] the seller to choose to calculate per-item tax, and sum that. In both cases, mathematical rounding (half-up) is used[2].

But in practice, there's little to no difference unless you're doing a single purchase of a lot of items with weird pricing bias.

--

[0] - Dz.U.2020.0.106 t.j. - Ustawa z dnia 11 marca 2004 r. o podatku od towarów i usług, art. 106e., ust. 7.

[1] - ibid., ust. 10.

[2] - ibid., ust. 11.

> That depends on whether they're rounding, or taking a floor or ceiling :). With proper rounding, it's a wash.

Agreed! If they are actually rounding it will be a statistical wash.

> Regardless of the rounding method, the fair way is to sum up purchases and compute tax on the total, precisely to minimize the loss of precision on rounding.

Again, agreed, this is why we do it this way in the US.

> Curiously, as far as I understand the Polish tax code (IANAL), the choice of the method to use is actually given to the vendor! The law recommends[0] that you calculate the tax by multiplying the rate with the total taxable amount, but also allows[1] the seller to choose to calculate per-item tax, and sum that. In both cases, mathematical rounding (half-up) is used[2].

US tax code, at least as far as income taxes go, uses the same rounding method (nearest decimal) however sales tax is can be quite a bit more complicated [1].

Also somewhat related, we quote our fuel prices to 3 decimals.

[1] - https://blog.taxjar.com/rounding-issues-sales-tax-returns/

This assumes VAT is always rounded up, which is not the case in e.g. Germany where it is rounded to the nearest cent - so the average rounding error cancels out to 0.

Note i said generic tax, not VAT. And I’m specifically talking about the US

There are a few details with that:

Does the sticker have to show all taxes or just the sales tax/GST/VAT? I know that pretty much every country in the world has an alcohol tax that is applied to things like wine. So should the sticker also include that?

In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view.

But yes I completely agree that the sticker price should include what you actually end up paying for that item. I also like it in some countries where there's a unit or weight cost with the item, so you can more easily compare different branded products. Though they usually make this number comically small on the price tag to make it harder to compare.

> In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view.

Which political affiliation and what gives you this idea?

There's been a few articles here on HN relating to free filing and automatic returns and how the tax filing industry is fighting it.

One name that popped up after a quick search inside a long article was Grover Norquist. From his Wikipedia entry he is part of a political association which wants to prevent any rise in taxes. From another article I read long ago it was mentioned that this includes preventing automatic filing since the government could introduce new taxes without people knowing.

Ah so it's not actually this:

> In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view.

It's actually this:

> since the government could introduce new taxes without people knowing

Along with increasing gov size, increasing gov expense, and destroying another industry.

I'm all for increased competition in tax filing software, and you're starting to see open source competition here as well. But spreading opinion as fact, and in this case in particularly, is called "misinformation" or "fake news"

It's an opinion I have based on outside observation of the political culture surrounding tax in the USA.

There are groups of people (political association) and vested interests (lobbyists) who want to make tax harder to pay than it needs to be so they can profit from it, either politically or financially.

In addition you need to manually calculate the sales tax for every different county in the USA on top of the sticker price. It has been suggested that this is enshrined in law and/or done by the stores themselves, but the net effect is that this sales tax is at the forefront of people's minds when going shopping.

Nearly all other countries have tax systems where the VAT/GST/Sales tax is already included in the sticker price, so you don't need to know which country has how much sales tax and manually add it on. Additionally lots of other countries have income tax systems where the authority already has all your information and can easily provide you a pre-filled tax return.

Given that the USA does not do these things and people actively block them, then my opinion is that the country as a whole has a hatred of making tax easier to pay. Most people may not want that, but they are either unwilling or unable to change it.

> There are groups of people (political association) and vested interests (lobbyists) who want to make tax harder to pay than it needs to be so they can profit from it, either politically or financially.

NOPE! That's the misinformation. They don't want to make it harder to tax, they want to make it harder for the gov to add taxes. That's it.

> In addition you need to manually calculate the sales tax for every different county in the USA on top of the sticker price. It has been suggested that this is enshrined in law and/or done by the stores themselves, but the net effect is that this sales tax is at the forefront of people's minds when going shopping.

It is enshrined in law in some states, not all. And again the reasoning is so that tax cannot be hidden. Not to make it more difficult.

> Nearly all other countries have tax systems where the VAT/GST/Sales tax is already included in the sticker price, so you don't need to know which country has how much sales tax and manually add it on. Additionally lots of other countries have income tax systems where the authority already has all your information and can easily provide you a pre-filled tax return.

I'll need some evidence of this, as this is not my experience having traveled to many different countries. Some do, not most.

> Given that the USA does not do these things and people actively block them, then my opinion is that the country as a whole has a hatred of making tax easier to pay. Most people may not want that, but they are either unwilling or unable to change it.

Again NOPE. It's a hatred of ever increasing taxes. The gov must prove it needs the money, not just have their hands in our checkbooks whenever they're dry.

So ultimately you have a different view on taxation, and that's fine. What's not fine is lying about why the other side is doing it. This is where that divide is coming from.

The end result of these things is that it makes it harder to account for and pay taxes. More of a cognitive burden on everyone for no real gain.

Same way it is here in india too

In the US it's called sales tax, not VAT, that may be why you're not getting results

In the US, sales tax rates vary by state, county and even city. Some states have no sales tax. It would be impossible to advertise a price for a product when it would be so many different numbers depending on where you are. For example, if a big grocery store chain wants to advertise the price of a 6-pack of Coke, do they list 20 different prices or do they eat the difference in taxes and make the end price the same?

Not saying that this will work in US, but India is also like US, federation of states, with federal tax, state tax, city tax all over the spectrum over the length & breadth of country. All advertisements of car, butter, biscuits, house, anything which can be priced over TV/Media advertises its MRP (maximum Retail Price), which is also printed on product itself too. Retailer use stickers on shelf or on product itself to tell what is the actual price, which by law should not be more that its MRP. The taxes along the route, physically & supplier/trader wise affects the price, but it is illegal for anybody retailer to sell anything more that its printed MRP.

Yes, same packet of potato chips costs R20 at capital R25 at hill stations (but its MRP shows R25).

Forcing after-tax price displays make tax revisions harder to notice so there are pros and cons to that

Aren't tax revisions in the local news?

Where I live (Poland), prices on shelves are displayed in full (more than that, there's the price you'll pay for an item and price per unit of mass/volume, to enable comparisons), but on the receipt, there's always a per-product sales tax summary printed. So if I cared about sales tax revisions, I could easily notice it on the receipt. But most of the time, I just learn about revisions from a news article.

Also not everyone pays the sales tax so it's probably easier to show price without tax and then on checkout you apply the needed tax rate.

Surely most people pay the sales tax, in which case you're optimising for the less common scenario.

In places where including VAT/GST/BTW/whatever is normal, shops (usually targetting resellers or contractors etc) where a significant amount of people don't have to pay the tax, I think generally both prices are listed and it's required to be very clear about what's going on.

That sounds like regulation - except anti-consumer one.

Funny. I find this to be something I appreciate and look out for when buying things or services in Germany, even if it's more expensive.

> I don't have to do math in my head that's +x% sales or state tax. That type of practice just isn't acceptable anywhere else.

Oblig: sales/retail taxes in the US vary city-by-city. While just like the rest of the world: US companies put their MSRP on products - but it would be unfair to expect retailers to charge the MSRP and eat the tax themselves because some areas have zero sales tax but others have a 10% tax. That's bigger than the profit-margin on many items sold at retail - and the simplest solution is just to have everything understand that the price on a box is the pre-local-tax price. And everyone (most people? or just most people on HN...) know roughly what their local sales tax rates are anyway (mine's around 9%) and as everyone pays by card having exact change isn't an issue.

I’ve lived in the UK and Germany and it’s incredibly rare that I’ve seen prices printed on the goods themselves. There’s a label on the shelf with the price. Even when there is a price on the box (usually much smaller stores - never supermarkets), the label on the shelf is often a different price.

To complement, in the EU, if you have two prices, one on the shelf and one on the box, the cheapest one is the right one. The only goods where prices are printed on the "box" are not in boxes, they are books or clothes.

When items get individual prices, they are usually small sticker prices and effectively only in small shops or discount prices in bigger stores.

It's not entirely that simple - if there's a store branded price on the shelf or a sticker, that takes precedence over any MSRP printed on the product itself by the manufacturer. Otherwise people could just rip off store branded stickers and opt out of the store's markup.

Maybe it's just not become an issue since the MSRP on most product packaging here is in £ or $ as they just reuse the UK or sometimes US packaging so it's clear that price is not aimed at Irish consumers.

The seller decides on the price, and labels the goods accordingly. Whatever "recommended retail price" may be printed on the box is of course covered with a sticker with the actual price.

It's about consumer protection. Buyers must know exactly how much they will need to pay to purchase an item BEFORE they pay. It would be unfair to expect consumers to calculate these things.

In Europe and the UK that won't fly. If it came with a price printed on the box, that's the price they should sell it at.

Not a lawyer not legal advice.

Not correct. The price on the 'Box' is the invitation to treat [0]. The price you pay in the UK is the verbal Offer at the checkout. They may/should sell it a the RRP, but it is not correct in law.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat

Or less, as the store is allowed to discount (officially the reverse: the manufacturer is not allowed to set prices of anyone except themselves, so if a store takes almost no margin or even sells below price, the manufacturers is forbidden to even talk about it.

> but it would be unfair to expect retailers to charge the MSRP and eat the tax themselves because some areas have zero sales tax but others have a 10% tax.

I disagree. If you want to sell something to a market then you should tailor your product to that market. That means doing some basic research about what the local taxes and laws are.

If you travel even 10 miles (16 km), sales tax changes. It is at the county level. The manufacturer cannot afford to analyze this level of granular market and the associated sales tax.

Ideally, the seller should list the price + tax if it is physically sold in a store. This should be fixed (along with the tips culture in US).

Online retailers still have this problem. Sales tax is literally based on the zip code you enter during the checkout page.

So how can this problem be solved? The only solution I see is a federally controlled fixed sales tax similar to EU. But, that would be unconstitutional in US. States hold the power and additional municipal taxes are at the county level.

I think you're trivializing the matter. I've had several conversations with Europeans about it and we eventually come to an understanding that its not easy. On surface, it sounds simple if we assume is a simple nation-wide VAT tax.

Its because your argument fundamentally does not hold water. "It would be too hard for manufacturers..." just is not true. You are trying to tell us that the only way to price something is printed on the original box (not even the product! just the box) and that it would be too onerous to expect them to price at each location accordingly. Are you really trying to insist that a sticker is too hard? Too onerous a task?

Perhaps you're mistaking seller vs manufacturer?

If the former, I already said:

> Ideally, the seller should list the price + tax if it is physically sold in a store. This should be fixed (along with the tips culture in US).

You could pay consumer tax not by the place you live in but by the place where business is located. Any additional taxes could be added by independent institution. Something like customs, just on local scale.

Living in couple of countries In EU and Asia, I can't imagine not knowing total price up front. It's pushing legislation problems on the end customer.

It creates a massive market force to drive down sales taxes. You could imagine that most companies would want to be established with lowest sales tax so as to increase their profit margins or to beat the competitive price of goods and services.

So, now, you have a new problem. Top counties with lowest sales tax in the US will massively attract more businesses forcing the rest of the counties to reduce their sales tax too.

The entire problem boils down to federal vs. local control. US is structured with a balance between local, state and federal powers.

I don't see the problem here.

I think you're being disingenuous. It's not on the manufacturer to make sure the product has the right price tag on it, but on the seller or shop. European shops put price labels on the shelves and their own tags on discounted or specialty goods.

The online retail problem is also trivially solved. If I got to the US version of any online shop as a EU resident I'm usually first greeted by a "which version do you want to browse" popup asking me if I really want the US version and not a different country. This affects the default language, currency and locale as well as pricing. There's no reason they couldn't ask for your zip code if they already have to do these calculations at checkout anyway.

The problem is that there's no reason US companies should do this because there's no competitive advantage in having transparent pricing. This would require legislation (probably at the federal level) but once there's regulations, you'd see these solutions pop up everywhere overnight.

It's funny to hear Americans lament about how it's hard to do business in the EU because of the many differences between countries and then turn around and use state or county differences as an excuse why it's "just too hard" to do what companies are doing in the EU. At this point I wonder if Californians are seeing the same "sorry, we can't figure out how to show you this website without harvesting your data" error pages on US news sites given how strict their new privacy laws are.

>Online retailers still have this problem. Sales tax is literally based on the zip code you enter during the checkout page.

Can't you ask the zip code before checkout, a popup like "If you want to see the real price enter the zip code now"

On the physical store don't you have in US prices printed on paper stickers? Are prices printed on the bottles and boxes and all stores will have the exact same prices? So if this is something you never seen in US let me explain how is done, some products have a recommended price printed on them but shops can put their own larger or smaller price. You will see also labels with full prices s tricked through and discounted prices printed under.

I also seen shops rotating the prices daily, like if they have 2 products A and B , you have prices like

Monday A: 10$, B:20$ Tu: A:11 , B:19 We: A:12 , B:18

so on, I am surprised that the US does not use this scummy price rotating tactics. The "scam" is that the shop will put an ad on radio and say "bananas only X$" , next day the ad will say "milk only Y$" , and each time you will hear the ad you think "this shop has cheap products, I should buy from there" but when you visit the banana will be cheap but in that day mil is expensive, 3 days later will be reversed.

Lots of other things also vary city-by-city, like rent and income or business taxes. Equal MSRPs impose an unfair burden on retailers in expensive places in pretty much the same way as local sales taxes. Businesses everywhere else manage these difficulties without cognitive burden for customers.

Having lived in the US this reasoning makes absolutely no sense. It's not like every store charges MSRP or that stores don't have sales. Every store pretty much has its own pricing and they have no problem showing this specific store's pricing without the added tax. It would be ridiculously simple to show that specific price with taxes added.

So you mean the seller doesn't know the final price before selling? They can't relabel products themselves or they can't mention the final price on the shelves? They just don't want to do it.