Most VAT based countries have a single VAT rate for the whole country (or possible a country-wide set of rates for different types of products). The United States is not like that. Even if we consider an individual state as the equivalent to Country, each state does not have one consistent sales tax rate.

Typically the state will have one rate, the county can have its own rate, the city its own rate, and potentially even special districts with their own sales tax rates.

That complicates things a lot. For example, if a law required the shown prices to include tax, it would mean that an online website cannot show you the price until you have entered your exact street address. Most people don't want to tell the website where they live just to find out a price that may not be any good.

The variable tax rate means that if the law applied to advertised prices shown on say TV, it would not be possible to have nationwide advertisements that show a price, or even statewide advertisements, or in some cases not even city-wide advertisements. (Unless they set a post-tax price based on what they can sustain with the highest tax rate, which means charging people in lower tax areas a higher price than they would otherwise have charged, just to be able to mention a price at all on TV). Unless the law allowed "between $x and $y depending on your local tax rate" (where X and Y are based on the lowest and highest tax rate for the advertising area).

Most people who want such post tax pricing laws would not be terribly happy with a law that allowed advertising a range like that.

On the other hand thing like cars really should have an all inclusive price sticker. They already have an itemized price sticker on the car so there is really nothing stoping these sellers from putting the remaining fees and taxes on there two as that should be consistent with the same dealer location and with such low inventory.

People will see the post tax price, compare it in their head with the pre-tax price they saw at some other store, and feel like the post tax prices store is more expensive even if this store’s final price is actually slightly lower than the other store’s price.

Thousands. Every municipality in my area can have their own sales tax and can change them whenever they want. For Texas alone that's ~1,220 potentially different sales taxes which can change at any time. Its not an impossible to keep track of thing though, plenty of organizations do it and most payment processors will essentially handle it for you. But its not exactly easy, aggregating all that and getting it all right in the first place is a good bit of work.

There are thousands of different sales tax rates in the US that change multiple times per year.

Each city, county, state and other things like metro transit districts, water districts and school districts can all contribute to the sales tax rate paid by an individual at the point of sale.

It is a very important distinction.

What's wrong with this solution?

Getting rid of sales tax would be the best solution imo but complicated

To replace consumption tax, which ensures those with large savings, yet no income, still get taxed as they spend, you'd have to somehow have full disclosure of all assets, and tax that, along with all the privacy implications.

And just imagine all the work, with every citizen's assets being examined yearly.

Of course, there are other options, but not many which replace consumption tax.

Additionally, not all consumption taxes are across-the-board sales taxes.

Across-the-board sales taxes are highly regressive taxes, because basic consumption needs are relatively flat across a population, so the poorest people pay a much higher percentage of their income in sales taxes than the wealthy.

Here in Mexico we have something called the "canasta básica" (basic basket) which encompasses a set of goods that are defined as basic for living (they are 40 https://www.gob.mx/canastabasica unfortunately the list is in an image so not easy to google translate... stupid government pages). These are closely guarded by the government and I believe the price is closely protected.

Something like that could be extrapolated, and set different taxes to different goods and services. Like, (IMHO, please don't flame me) an XBOX should be heavily taxed, running shoes should be heavily taxed, a "gaming graphics card" should be heavily taxed. Same with services: "go cart racing" should be heavily taxed, Fast-food should be heavily taxed, while fixing stuff (fixing your blender, or your washing machine) should not.

For example, an unsliced bagel is food. A sliced to order bagel is prepared food and taxable. A system like you describe would be insanely complex.

Here’s NY guidance on when a sandwich is taxable: https://www.tax.ny.gov/pubs_and_bulls/tg_bulletins/st/sandwi...

As insane as that is, I think it makes the sales tax more progressive, as poorer people spend a high proportion of income on food. I am always struck when I travel to a place like South Carolina, where the property taxes are low, but people with nothing are paying 9% sales taxes on food.

Which makes it harder for people to know all the ins and outs of...

This is also the case in the US (varies state by state).

Some places may also benefit from high property tax, which now that I think of it, is a "holding" tax, not income tax.

Many landlords and development companies add on percentage based fees. Some merchants will report these on recipes as PIF Tax (Property Improvement Fees). These are not a technically a tax, but impact the consumer the similarly

Even if you are tax exempt or buying non-taxable items like food, the property own still collects PIF.

PIFs are in the contract between the landlord and merchant the actual details of how fees work are not publicly know. Merchants may benefit from actual property improvements, or the fees are entirely a profit stream for the landlord.

If they (or a family member) later purchase prints through their online gallery that are essentially drop shipped to them? Who the hell knows.

There's a simple solution to this: stop doing this. Ban cities and districts from having their own sales taxes. There's no reason to allow this. In my country, there's a single national sales tax that's the same everywhere.

The US's problems are a result of its own stupid decisions.

Nothing unfortunate about it: that decentralization is the cause of most of the problems.

Brazil went through the same thing, but took the (imo smarter) approach of describing the tax breakdown in the receipt

Obviously, the be able to reclaim the tax, they need to know how much has been paid on the transaction.

Governmental spending can be a huge drag on the economy, and people may not realize just how much, unless they are personally confronted with the true scale of governmental intrusion. Many people today take it all as an unquestionable given, rather than as one choice among many.

In other words, I don’t think that argument holds.

0: https://www.theflightexpert.com/all-in-ticket-prices-usdot-r...

We can make either type of tax regressive, progressive, or vary by income level to push people toward the median lifestyle.

Implementation costs and the ease of avoidance should be larger concerns I think.

So in that one case, choosing sales tax isn't regressive.

* Income Tax

* Property Tax

People in all states pay some combo of those 3. Some say no income tax (FL). But that means higher sales tax and property tax. Others have all 3 taxes, but in lower amounts.

Do you really think in New Hampshire you pay less total tax then someone like me, living in the Midwest? You likely do better than NY/Cali, but not the Midwest..

Bragging about no sales tax while paying a higher income / property taxes was a pretty funny / American thing to do..

Seems to me for local taxes land-value tax is clearly the most sensible. It aligns the intensives much better.

On state and federal level you can use flat or progressive income tax.

I don't understand why anybody would do sales or value added tax.

But recently I have been thinking if land-value tax for everything just didn't make sense.

Obviously this is a cherry picked example and can't represent but .1% of the population. But each lever you pull for tax rewards/punishes a different group. A famous example if FL has no income tax, letting retirees stretch their fixed pensions further.

In general, if a state has a lot of tourists coming to it. They won't get property tax nor income tax on the visitors, but they WILL get sales tax. So it makes sense to raise the sales tax, so that you can lower the property / income tax for people that live there yearround.

Tourists will make some locations more valuable then others, so it should have an impact on property tax.

I'd rather not deal with sales tax, gets annoying sometimes with cash.

Not displaying the taxes is infuriating when visiting other places, since unless you look up all of the applicable taxes you're effectively just guessing at the cost of anything.

edit: you can get a refund on the state’s portion of the sales tax, but not the city. (ex. WA state form https://dor.wa.gov/file-pay-taxes/apply-tax-refund/state-sal...).

So in-store vs delivery, or online event vs in-person, etc.

Most entertaining: where I live, we have to charge the client's tax rate if it's consulting work, but our provincial tax rate if it's hosting.

When you negotiate salary with a new employer, do you include the employer paid Social Security and Medicare taxes? Do you say I require $100,000 or $107,650 (Social Security is $6,200, Medicare is $1,450)?

They are a free enterprise that can offer whichever products at whatever prices they want. And consumers are free to vote with their wallets.

From TFA, they're advertising the vehicle's MSRP without the extra $1500 cost, and that extra $1500 is not optional when you go to actually buy one.

When you go to sign the dotted line, the price includes this charge. If you don’t like it, don’t sign.

Buying a car is not the hardest feat by any stretch imaginable. If you’ve put down a deposit, you will have seen the all in cost. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

Yes.

This is the kind of deception that starts early on in the process to get you to narrow down your car selection by deceiving you on the actual price of the car.

> Buying a car is not the hardest feat by any stretch imaginable. If you’ve put down a deposit, you will have seen the all in cost. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

It's not hard, but it's definitely not pleasant, and the the auto makers and dealers can do some slimy practices. The parent comment I was replying to seemed to conflate auto makers should not be allowed to advertise an inaccurate MSRP with over-regulation. Also you are not 100% correct about deposits, just ask Bronco reservation holders who put down deposits with dealers for reservations, that later got turned into orders, that when the car arrived had thousands of dollars of surprise "ADM" (Additional Dealer Markup in Ford lingo) added to the buy sheet.

What's frightening is how many people believe in the myth of the free market of rational consumers.

As far as I can tell there are a vanishingly small number of problems where "new laws" are the optimal answer. Increased regulatory oversight generally leads to ossified markets with higher costs. Many of the most reviled monopolies throughout American history got there in no small measure because of government protection in the form of "regulation".

In this case, there are multiple car manufacturers available to Americans from around the world - if this makes GM vehicles more expensive or causes a consumer backlash that damages sales, GM will change their behaviour. That seems like a more responsive mechanism than piling on new regulation to dictate which types of fees are okay and which aren't.

This is simply not true. The common reviled monopoly strategies include price fixing, collusion, natural monopolies, markets with high barriers to entry, network effects, and others in addition to regulatory capture. Regulations that contribute to monopolistic tendencies are "vanishingly small" in number, you just hear about them a lot because people don't like them.

> if this makes GM vehicles more expensive or causes a consumer backlash that damages sales, GM will change their behaviour.

It may be time to walk through history and see all the dark patterns that were solved by regulation. Before the EPA, it was common for manufacturing companies to dump industrial waste directly into rivers, for example.

Consumers only have so much energy for backlash, and your theoretical system requires everyone to have an encyclopedic memory of all the shitty things that every company does and weigh all of that in their minds when making consumer choices. It's impractical and impossible. Regulatory agencies are a much better system and that's why every modern economy depends on them.

The idea that regulation is a burden on society is fanciful. What is burdensome is regulations that cannot be readily adapted. Unfortunately, popular myths like “regulation bad” is part of the reason regulators stay with policies they would much rather propose updating. Veteran regulators are quite eager to improve their frameworks. It is “politics” that prevents their evolution.

Hey, uh, there's this thing called Google - most people start there when they're making a big-ticket purchase like a car. Or you could pay for Consumer Reports to get expert-level analysis. Or you can just ask people on the relevant subreddit.

Consumers have access to more information to inform buying decisions than at any point in history. So unless General Motors is the only car manufacturer in the world, people can weigh the pros and cons and make their own decisions. More intervention from government is totally unnecessary and likely even harmful in the form of generally higher prices.

It clearly isn't. The power and knowledge asymmetry between producers and consumers is such that most producers can get away with abhorrent behaviour pretty much all the time with no significant repercussions. That's why boycotts don't work, among other things.

Also, for most cars, paying sticker would be a rip off anyway. Unless there is a shortage going on, no one expects to pay sticker price.

How does that work when advertising in media that is available in more than one country, such as broadcasts of major international sporting events?

Because they have been specifically targeting iPhone + App Store bundling: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22996248/apple-sideloadin...

I feel like we used to. Everything is so overtly nickle and dime the working class now.

Government gets more money this way

Because the US collects taxes very differently, so you can never make a fair comparison between identical tax categories.

Just look at the gasoline tax differences between the two. The core purpose of that tax and what it’s used to fund varies dramatically between the two regions. So, naturally the amount being taxed would be different.

Also, The US govt tends to have taxes below the rates needed to operate (US has a higher deficit), so the taxes will more likely be lower by comparison.

We drive greater distances here. More rural miles. More highway miles.

Rural driving (constant 50mph with no stop and start of lights for an hour or more), is far less damaging to roads than start and stop traffic. Interstate miles are the same concept.

Beyond that, expanding and building roads, is cheaper in rural areas.

So there may actually be more gas tax collected per repair cost, even with the rate lower in the US.

Canada has higher gas tax than the US, but lower than the EU. But we also have cold weather everywhere, with frost and ice destroying roads.

So on average, we need more than the US, which only has a few northern/cold states.

As far as I can see the differences are in what happens on the retailer's supply side. In the US generally there won't be sales tax on the supplier's sale of goods to the retailer. In the EU there might be VAT on those, but the retailer might get to deduct the VAT they pay when they are remitting the VAT they collect.

The net result in both systems is that the consumer pays all of the sales tax or VAT. In the US system the government doesn't see any of that until the final sale to the consumer. In the EU, entities up the supply chain pay part of it but get it back later via deductions so in effect VAT for those entities is a loan to the government which the government pays back from the VAT consumers pay.

In general, Americans pay less in total taxes but we give that back with much greater expenses for things like healthcare & drug costs, retirement, education, etc. At the top end that works out in your favor but there’s no equivalent for things like our rates of medical bankruptcy for everyone below the highest income levels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_we...