Ideally we would take it further and include restaurant fees post-covid for fair wages when instead they frankly should just be hiking the cost of food and paying their teams properly. Not sure if this bill affects the service industry specifically but the late tacking-on of mandatory fees is getting egregious.

I believe the resort fee is listed separately so that the hotel owner can reduce the amount of royalties paid to the hotel brand, since they get a 10% to 15% cut of revenue for accommodation charges, but presumably not for things like resort fees and whatnot.

Same with airline prices. Google flight search has always shown me the total price, as have the airline websites themselves.

Every single hotel room on the Vegas strip has a resort fee, for example. Try it yourself - when searching websites will list, say $50/night but when you actually go book it you'll see an additional significant "resort fee" on top of that. It makes it hard to compare prices - you will have to go to the checkout page to see what you'd actually pay.

Airlines have been required to list all mandatory fees in their prices since Jan. 26, 2012, by federal law.

That's the default behavior, but a point in Marriot's favor is that you can at least select a checkbox to include taxes & fees in the quoted price. However it then bundles them together and I still can't see how much is required taxes and how much is the hotel's resort fee. I can only see that breakdown once I actually select my room.

[1] https://www.marriott.com/travel-experience/resort-hotels/

As an example, right now I'm looking at doing an extended trip, on the order of 2-4 weeks. I just need one cleaning at the end. If they inflate the daily rate to cover cleaning, I'll end up paying a lot more than the average weekender trip. Or if they hide it in a variable price, then I'll have a hard time comparing different lengths of stays across different places.

I disagree with this, and it's easily handled on the backend too. If the cleaning fee is e.g once per trip or once every few days, smear that cost across the cost of the stay for your effective nightly rate.

Frankly, how much it costs to clean a unit shouldn't be a separate calculus when comparing rooms. What ultimately matters is how much I'm out of pocket by the end of the trip, and that's most easily compared by showing the customer the effective nightly rate for the date range being searched. Do the breakdown later, sure, but the effective nightly rate is what should be shown first. Or even just the total for the stay, but no weirdness with fees where those fees can be smeared.

Last tidbit: cleaning fees are another profit vehicle for Airbnb sellers; rarely is the fee the same as what the seller is paying the cleaning service.

> shouldn't be a separate calculus when comparing rooms

Solved by this:

> AirBnb should show initial totals with it included, so you're never surprised by it.

The reason I put it that way is that the "smear that cost across the cost of the stay for your effective nightly rate" is hiding a number that I then have to reverse engineer if I'm looking at stays of different lengths. Since I work remotely, I could easily stay an extra week or two, but I won't do it in a place that is going to gouge me for cleaning I don't need.

The cost to clean shouldn't. The fact that there's a large fixed charge that's going to be amortized across the number of nights you're staying is relevant though.

Yes, by all means give me the total amount for the stay length. But show me any fixed charges so that I can maybe decide it makes sense to stay longer given part of the cost is fixed.

This misses the point that it's useful to have the one-time costs separated from the nightly costs so that consumers can better understand if they can get a better nightly cost by extending their stay (or even ideally from having options over those fixed costs.) It's the same logic as separating shipping costs from unit costs in online sales, because you can often save on shipping by spreading the cost across multiple units and it benefits the consumer to know this.

For instance, the famous "$5 footlong" from Subway couldn't be advertised that way nationally, or even within a single state or metro area due to different taxes on prepared food.

I'll note that the costs of labor, space, and other inputs also can vary widely across a state, so tax differences don't strike me as unsolvable. And regardless, "prices and participation may vary" is an extremely common disclaimer for ads with prices.

I wanna say Little Caesars had kind of a similar situation. I think they actually had a fight at one point with their franchisees over their too-static-to-be-realistic very-low prices.

In practice, these national campaigns seem to kinda be a bad thing, anyway—either abusing franchisees who can't evade them, or else not actually being offered universally (which is pretty damn close to false advertising, "participating locations" fine-print being more a bullshit dodge than something intended to truly communicate the truth of the offer).

I’m btw. not excusing the USA here, even with this weird taxation that is still no excuse for this anti-consumer behavior of having sales tax as a hidden cost

There's a short history of California sales taxes here on page 3 (which is ~30 by PDF page count): https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/report/...

But basically during the depression, state-level sales taxes arose in a lot of places. Some cities/counties/districts then got in on the action. This means that people got to decide their own levels of taxation (and spending) on a much more granular level. Which as somebody who lives in a high-tax/high-service area (relative to America, not to the civilized world) is great by me.

replacing big ticket items such as a macbook pro 16” ends up being about $40 cheaper, especially for someone commuting into the city for work anyway.

It really doesn't. It's been a stealth way to increase your rates for a long time now.

> I think AirBnb should show initial totals with it included, so you're never surprised by it.

They do, but it makes comparing rentals (both within AirBnB and across services) a pain in the ass, because it's not factored into the initial rate-per-night that you see and that they sort by if you ask them to show cheapest-first.

> It really doesn't. It's been a stealth way to increase your rates for a long time now.

Two things can be true at once.

Cleaning is an actual activity they actually have to do after I leave. There are actual costs. E.g., they might use a service that specializes in vacation rental cleaning: https://cleaningglow.com/san-francisco-services/vacation-ren...

Do some people inflate the fee as a way of increasing your rates? Surely. But that's only a problem when the comparison price doesn't include it, a problem I agree we should solve. I'd just like the fee to also be listed somewhere, as it makes other comparisons easier for some people, me included.

I objected to "actual cost", not "actual activity". Yes, they clean (usually...). No, it doesn't cost anywhere near what they're charging, unless you left the place such a wreck that you're getting a 1-star guest rating.

I show up at a clean place. After I leave, somebody needs to clean up to make it good for the next person. No matter who does the cleaning, the hosts or somebody they hire, this takes supplies and labor. The only person putting money in is me, so the cleaning obviously has to be on my dime. I just want the pricing to be transparent in the details and included in the headline numbers.

The host wants to make money from a room, it is in their interest to keep it clean for their guest, because they are the ones making profit from it.

Making the room habitable and desirable is their cost in order for you to spend money on their service.

3rd party charges 14-18% commission, and a lot of big hotel uses resort fee to reduce the commission.

I just wish the big brand uses the power like airlines (3% commission) and negotiate the commission down to 3%.

The thing is, cleaning genuinely costs a bunch when a guest departs. It’s a per-stay cost.

This doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to hide it. Having a rate structure that has a nightly rate plus a per-visit rate or, equivalently, a first-night rate and an additional-night rate is just fine as long as it’s advertised. And a search for a stay of a given duration should show the all-in price.

a) when I search for a place to stay for x nights, the cleaning fee should be amortized into the nightly rate (protip- Airbnb's website will do so if it thinks you're in Australia)

b) I don't have to do chores. It's super irritating to pay a $300 cleaning fee, then check in and see that the host expects me to to wash the sheets, do the dishes, take out the trash, sweep the patio, and water the plants.

And how can hotels magically factor it in the room cost?

Ok maybe not in the US.

I completely agree, but would like to make the observation that if they're forced to advertise it properly, then something different is likely to happen.

Businesses like to find places to give "discounts" to make their prices seem cheaper. This is an excellent opportunity. They would list a nightly rate, and offer discounts for multiple night stays.

They need to redo it for airfare, because the airlines have figured out how to workaround it by splitting out things that used to be included (seat assignment, baggage, etc). Some airlines now have sliding rates for bags and so you have to know the exact flight to get the price for checked or carry-on bags. Even if it's split out from the total, all of those *potential* fees should be available up-front as well.

All my friends found it pretty hilarious; there's such a thing as marking up a sale once the consumer is invested, but when the actual cost is several times more than the advertised price it's a lot easier to say nope, no thanks.

This is how it works in most of the world, there's no good reason it shouldn't work that way here in the US.

Someone will come along and point out an edge case, but for the vast majority of retail situations this is doable.

Serving good, safe food is something pretty much every food business wants to do at the outset. Nobody opens a restaurant thinking, "Let's see who we can get sick!" But imagine your hamburger stand is next to a guy who's willing to cut corners. Use the older meat. Buy from the dodgier supplier. Maybe spend less labor time cleaning. Suddenly his prices are lower and you're losing business. Other restaurants nearby are too. You're faced with a choice: do you cut corners, or go out of business?

So if you talk with restaurateurs, you'll find that most of them are in favor of health codes and health inspections, because although they can be a pain, they're keeping competitors on a level playing field. They like food safety laws for suppliers even though they make prices higher, because they don't want to have to worry about giving their customers unsafe or suspicious food.

Consumers should be consciously aware of the split.

[EDIT] That is, I'm skeptical that if one removed that limit, competition would keep margins where they are. Forcing all profit to come out of 15% of revenue probably does play a major role in keeping the actual margin as low as it is.

I suppose one could assert they are all in cahoots and have a secret deal to accept low single digit profit margins to keep out of the news cycle, while simultaneously agreeing to pay healthcare providers more and more each year, but I would want proof.

Cursory look at insurance company executive pay does not show any anomalies.

Tax is included in all end user prices in every European country I’m aware of.

They are not congruent.

Taxes in Europe are also much higher in general. Perhaps this is a result of obscuring the amounts in the advertised prices—it never raises to the level of conscious consideration of the tax burden at point of purchase.

Sure you can argue some of that goes to military (a safe nation is kinda infrastructure) and healthcare/Welfare (healthy and fed employees and customers are good for business too) but regardless your view on taxes, they all somehow end up back to helping the nation regardless of how efficiently or directly that happens.

The idea that the primary purpose of taxes is to provide infrastructure hasn't been true ever.

The bulk of expenditures are social welfare programs and other similar handout and wealth transfer programs intended to punish the successful and reward the failures for political purposes.

Social security, healthcare, education often comprise over 50% of expenditures in most first world countries. Interest and debt are also another major expenditure.

The "core responsibilities of the state" , that is the military, justice system and internal security, infrastructure usually consume less than 20% of government expenditures.

In America this is absolutely false in every sense.

It’s not the majority of the budget. They aren’t punishing success and they don’t “reward failure”. If you don’t want to succeed because a subset of your income will go helping those with bad luck then you’re welcome to be a failure.

> The "core responsibilities of the state" , that is the military, justice system and internal security, infrastructure usually consume less than 20% of government expenditures.

Hmm who said that was the core responsibility? I think you’re missing a bit in the list…

> We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

If the 6820 billion spent by the US government in 2021, 4394 billion were spent on income security, social security, health and medicare. That's almost 65% of government expenditures going directly to wealth transfer programs.

Mind you that doesn't account for all such programs (notably that value excludes education, housing, agricultural subsidies,etc...) So the real rate is actually higher.

The us is not unique in these ratios in the western world.

[0] https://preview.redd.it/us-government-revenue-spending-and-d...

If the taxes are silly and ridiculous (which many are), then they should be rolled back and people should know about them. That's not conservative, it's just common sense.

Nobody is having the information hidden from them in any case. Even pre-filled from the IRS, it would be right in front of you.

2) Surveys about understanding of how taxes work, of personal or typical tax burden, and even about whether a given individual believes they were affected by some new high-profile tax law or other (versus whether they actually were...) demonstrate pretty damn conclusively that this approach has entirely failed, anyway.

Here in Germany every bill, every receipt will contain that information. (I mean, obviously, it’s legally required.)

Different sellers do this differently in terms of clarity, though I think this has little to do with any kind of price signal to the buyer or sticking it to the government or something like that.

My feeling is that the more likely it is that the customer is a company (which do not have to pay VAT) the more clearly do sellers communicate the VAT part of the price.

In fact, if you are not selling to consumers you can ditch that VAT altogether when you communicate your prices. Alternatively (when talking about online retailers) they may provide a toggle to switch between being a business customers or a private customer, e.g. here the toggle top left next to the Conrad logo: https://www.conrad.de

  Banks across the European Union slap customers with hidden fees, offer financial advice that can turn out to be harmful and provide inadequate information to consumers before they sign up for accounts, according to a report released Tuesday by the European Commission.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g187234-i138-k10962835...

https://wise.com/gb/blog/transparency-an-open-letter-from-th...

Yes, it can get a bit more complicated for internet based stores, but even there they do already know how much to charge at the payment step, so again I say that it is a (customer hostile) choice not to show the real price up front.

On the shelf, yes, but then what's on the shelf wouldn't match what's advertised on the Internet, in the paper, on TV and radio, etc. Because each city can have its own sales tax, and each state can have its own sales tax, if you're, say, McDonald's, you can't say a hamburger is $3.00 in your TV ad because it'll be $3.18 in Michigan, and $3.30 in California, and even within the states, it can vary by city, if I recall correctly from my cash register programming days. It's a stupid system all around, but it does actually make it harder to do what everyone wishes they would do.

That really sounda like a McDonalds problem. Why should everyone put up with a bait and switch so huge companies can have an easier time advertising? If they need to advertise a 3$ burger all over the country, then they should be ready to pay the cost differences of providing that burger everywhere.

a) Universal sales tax within the state. Allow local governments some other varying taxes (such as income or paycheck tax)

b) Put small bracket under the price “(includes 9.5% sales tax for zip 98210 <a>change location</a>)”

In general though I think physical storefronts would be the shoe in. Virtual might require more thought or even changes to how we do taxes to make as much sense.

Many stores like to pre-tag each product package, either at the store or manufacturer- you couldn't do that if the tax had to be included in the price as the stores have many locations each with different tax rates. (I do think the tax rates should be prominently posted at the door).

Sales tax compliance is already a massive PITA for retail stores. Making them include the sales tax on the tag would just be an even bigger PITA.

Sales taxes are hard to make progressive (they're usually regressive) and can be harder to enforce (if they're local).

It depends on your goals. It sort of makes sense that we have both, at differing rates.

The big issue I have with sales tax is that it is a much worse solution to the problem than a simple value-added tax (VAT). Most countries have figured out that VAT is more difficult to cheat.

(I know this isn’t true in practice because of exclusions from sales taxes, but we could imagine one that applied to all consumption.)

There is some strange axiomatic derivation happening in this thread. The term "regressive tax" has a specific meaning; we can just start with that as an axiom, rather than re-deriving all of economics. A regressive tax is simply one that takes a higher percentage of income from low-income taxpayers than high-income taxpayers.

Honestly seems like some mental gymnastics to me to argue that regressive is about what % of income is spent on taxes rather than amount of taxes paid but that's the argument.

It's a lot harder for a city to collect income tax than sales tax.

There is a good reason for taxes to be shown separately: it draws your attention to how much the government is charging you.

Like you'd, I'd prefer prices to show the total amount I have to pay, but I accept that there is at least one good reason against the situation common where I'm from (the UK).

What’s annoying in the US is sales tax isn’t applicable to a range of items depending on the state and often not at all on services. When it’s included in the price there’s no surprises at the register.

  VAT is still shown on receipts in the UK same as it is in the US.

I couldn't even tell you what the California sales tax is without referencing this table.

https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/taxes-and-fees/rates.aspx

For a description of a particularly egregious version of what they (hopefully) are trying to stop: https://passingtime.substack.com/p/perfidious-pricing

Also, a 2-year-old story from the Times about how drip pricing is getting out of control: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/opinion/consumers-drip-pr...

Like who are they working for? Me? Or the b&b owner?

All the while, you don't get daily cleaning like you would in a hotel.

It's pretty bad, and I'm gradually moving back to hotels, which are a known quantity.

From tipping, to taxes not in the sale price, to insurances not being able to give a price for a procedure, to hotel fees… I could never actually guess how much anything would cost.

Either the wording of the law will have a ton of exclusions per industry.

Even if it does it's better than no law.

Look no further than the shit show of the 11 chapter 99 section GDPR.

This gets complicated and there's good reason.

The taxes depend on where you take possession of the goods. If you purchase an item and walk up to the checkout counter, you pay the taxes there. On the other hand, if you are buying lumber in Kansas City, KS to be delivered in Kanas City, MO - you pay the MO taxes (4.225%) rather than the KS taxes (6.5%). So, putting the taxes on the lumber ($3.35) in KS would be $0.22 and if it was to be delivered on the other side of the state line, that would be $0.15.

If you were to say "ahh! Lets solve this by having taxes paid for where you buy it instead" then everyone incorporates in Delaware and you get some sizable data centers in Oregon and sell everything online from there... and you've got other problems with states trying to collect sales tax on goods delivered there.

It gets even better. In some places (e.g. Washington) you pay use tax[0][1] if the use tax would be higher than the sales tax you did pay. So if for example you buy something in Oregon and bring it home to Washington, you pay all of the use tax. If you bought something in a state with a sales tax that is lower than the Washington use tax, you pay the difference. (It isn't immediately clear if you can try to recoup the difference if you buy something in a higher sales tax location than your local use tax rate).

[0] It's the same as your sales tax rate.

[1] https://dor.wa.gov/taxes-rates/use-tax

Some time back that was also the case with online sales. That you paid the tax of the state where you bought if it if that state had a tax nexus there - otherwise you didn't pay sales tax and were expected to self report the use tax.

Except no one did. So sales tax was required to be collected by online sellers always.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/21/heres-what-that-supreme-cour...

As to the use tax - when I bought clothes at Mall of America in MN (2010ish) and lived in northern Wisconsin I'd remember to add that to the tax reporting.

Under that approach, live in Texas and buy everything online from Oregon and you'll never pay any taxes.

States need to raise revenue somehow and playing that form of tax arbitrage shifts the burden of taxes to the people who don't have the resources to do that.

I am saying that most people don't have the resources to play tax arbitrage. Those that do are the ones that should likely be paying the most taxes.

Going to a system were sales taxes go to 0 based on where you buy it (online in Oregon) doesn't mean that states will abandon the sales tax but rather that the tax burden that local governments can collect (sales, property) will go up and disproportionately impact the people who can least afford it.

As it is, that approach would be overturning South Dakota vs Wayfair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc. --- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf

Sales tax is regressive and a worse option for taxation. It is, however, one of the few options that local governments have for raising funds.

The tax system needs an overhaul (though frankly my confidence in congress not just doing another tax cut for the rich is low). Disrupting sales tax without a corresponding overhaul would likely make things much worse in many of the poorer areas of the nation and those where much of the economy is based on non-residents visiting.

I hope I’m not coming off as rude—really appreciate the discussion thus far!

Also consider things like Nevada which has no income tax and one of the higher combined sales tax because they are able to extract money from out of state people as tourists there.

California also shows up in the "rather high combined sales tax" in part because local governments arne't able to reliably use property tax (yes, its another regressive tax - and California is a special case there) to raise local funds. ( https://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/sales-tax/unders... ).

There are some progressiveish aspects to sales tax as it selects which items are taxable. In Minnesota (for example), clothing is not taxed. On the other hand, from Wisconsin, its sometimes cheaper to shop online and have Ikea delivered rather than go to Chicago and pay local taxes there ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/State_Sa... )

In many cases, sales taxes try to tax the more "luxury" items though it gets complicated (food eaten in the place of purchase gets taxed while food that is not hot and to be consumed elsewhere is not taxed).

This comes from experience working in the tax part of point of sales software a few years ago. The "it gets complicated" gets really complicated... and even worse when you then start looking at it from the fiscal policy side for local governments.

If you sell to Missouri, you pay Missouri tax. It’s not actually complicated. I’m not sure what you’re trying to solve?

I am not saying there's an easy solution but rather a "the easy solution misses every complicated case for which there are many."

Most people are only employed by one job, take the standard deduction, and have no other tax complications. But they are forced to file a tax return because they *might* have something to declare the IRS doesn't already know about.

Removing the sales tax from milk I am buying at a supermarket because a person might purchase lumber is insane, ..., right?

This has gotten ridiculous past 2-3 year. Buy a $3.00 coffee , $1 tip is expected. I hate those ipad type payment consoles.

Heck, my barber now charges $25 for a haircut (which takes all of 15 minutes) and we're expected to tip for that too.

Then there are tips that I apparently don't really know about but if I don't, I'm the jerk. I never knew I was supposed to tip the natural gas guy when he comes by to do some service (which is 'free', this is service from the actual gas company on the meter). My neighbor tips the garbage truck driver.

If someone put an initiative on the ballot that explicitly banned tipping, I'd vote for it.

It's been customary to tip barbers since forever, hasn't it? When I was just 8, my father gave me money to tip the barber. I think the principle is, you tip so that the server remembers you. With haircuts, that can make a difference.

My hair is now so thin and wispy that no barber can make it look OK. I cut it very short myself, with electric clippers. I haven't been to a barbers in 8 years.

> My hair is now so thin and wispy that no barber can make it look OK. I cut it very short myself, with electric clippers. I haven't been to a barbers in 8 years.

Ha! I'm getting there fast. I can still get it cut so it doesn't look terrible, but it quickly grows out and starts to look patchy, and worse, like I'm trying to have some kind of hangover. I'm this ---><--- close to just taking the clippers to it myself and calling it good.

I think this comment perfectly encapsulates why tipping has exploded and why it's never going away. People say they hate tips, but they complain vehemently when the base price of those goods rises to a decent wage.

In most urban areas I'd posit the reason for the explosion of tipping is because of the growing wealth inequality and explosion in housing costs. I'd bet that your barber is having a hell of a harder time making ends meet than, say, your average software developer compared to 10 years ago.

I'm not complaining about the price of the haircut, per se. I guess I could have phrased it better. What's getting me is that they're raising the price steadily, every few months it seems. That's cool, inflation is real, they have to make a living, I get it. But if they're doing a good job ratcheting up prices to keep up with inflation, why do I need to worry about tipping them so they can make ends meet?

Yes, they're not up to software developer levels. But they do get carpal tunnel, so there's that. And they require a bit of training and licensing before they can work. But at $100/hr, lets assume the stylist is getting 50% of that. They're not poor, they're more than 3x our local minimum wage.

Even then, it would bother me that my tipping was required for them to make ends meet. I'd much rather pay a fair price and not feel guilty based on how much I tip, wondering if it's enough, etc.

Is this a fancy coffee shop thing? I admittedly don't go to cafes often, but my impression was that it's a "tipping optional" type of place (as opposed to something like full service restaurants which are tipping defacto mandatory).

Tipping was just not even considered in these transactions, before.

[EDIT] Oh, and percentage-tip defaults for situations where the norm before was maybe you toss your extra change or a $1 bill in the tip jar, and it was pretty normal not to tip at all most of the time. "18%, 20%, 25%, Custom, Skip".

Yes i am too much of wuss to not tip when the person behind the counter is staring right at me making that choice.

The next haircut I got I asked “what is a good tip” and the hair cutter would not tell me. I guessed 20% and went about my day. Then someone told me “that was too low”.

I ended up cutting my own hair, or waiting until I was in another sane country.

My barber and most in the area have increased their prices significantly. 20% at $20 isn't bad. When my haircut is now pushing 35-40 range it becomes harder to stomach.

In fact, we all should stop to frequent places that exploit employees by not paying them a livable wage. And if the solution to this means an increase in price, so be it.

The defense of 'they might be contractors', which rent a seat for a fixed price or on a % revenue sharing with the salon is even more ridiculous.

They are contractors, so they have all the means to set their own price.

I remember all the travel advisories said something about 10 to 15 percent.

It's way over the top aggressive now.

Soon, I will just start asking them to input something that takes work: "Please input $0.57, thank you SO MUCH!"[0]

I expect the "custom amount" button to go away, at which point I will say something about making sure the average amount is about what I wanted to pay, and that means skipping some tips, and paying others, and oh by the way can you make a note of that. Is your manager here... Sorry about that, but getting this stuff right is really important...

This is all a really craptastic game I would rather not play.[1]

[0] I expect someone to get it wrong, or try and skate out on that little bit of work. Hoo boy! "Nope, let's make sure it is right please. Yeah, go back, hit custom, and yes $0.57 please. Yeah, you got it! Thank you!"

[1] Like the check your bags Nazi they forced some poor soul to be. What I ended up doing was to get a gift receipt.

Then, as I am walking right out with the stuff they have my money for, I hand it to them, "Here, please hold on to this for me, thanks!"

The inconsistencies some people have when complaining about regulation, California, and Democrats is just irritating

California passes a lot regulations, so there is a lot of red meat for either side of the regulations good/bad arguments.

Also good and bad are subjective

Of course good and bad are subjective. That is the whole point, the concept of regulations can't be generally put into a good or bad basket. No one is advocating for absolutely no regulations. You are arguing against a straw man that you made up.

Since every politician and person wants good legislation and not bad legislation there's no difference between republicans and democrats. Given that why have Republicans made is a core part of their party. It's like saying "I want what's best for America".

Not all 50 states have a tax system as absurd as California's, where it matters down to the exact part of the street you're standing on when buying something.

Other states are the example CA should follow, not the other way around.

Sure it's hard. Do I care? Not in even the slightest. I have not one picogram of care.

The calculation is made at the point of sale. They can list a final price and work backwards. Does that make it harder for a business to set the price? Yeah maybe. I still don't care.

It's a clearly solvable problem. It'd provide a superior consumer experience. It'd be slightly inconvenient for businesses. SHIP IT.

In California, you are taxed when you earn a dollar, and taxed when you spend that same dollar.

If you look at your bank account and it's balance is $100, you do not actually have $100 in purchasing power, but rather 7-12% less, because sales tax will be computed when you spend this money.

Why not just charge the appropriate amount for Income Tax and be done with it...

In the UK we have two different kinds of income tax; one is called National Insurance, but it's not insurance at all. It's there so that the government can brag about reducing income tax.

When the UK joined the EU, we had to introduce sales tax (VAT). Part of the VAT receipts were to fund the EU. Note that VAT is much higher than US sales taxes (20%). Now we're out: whoopee! No more VAT! Oh, hang on...

It's only unfair if the collected tax revenue isn't used to benefit the poor.

The US has one of the most progressive tax systems on the planet. Sweden has one of the most regressive [1]. A tax being regressive or progressive doesn't make it inherently bad or good. And if a country can't effectively utilize tax revenue then it doesn't matter who foots the bill.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6946565/progressive-taxes-are-...

I think the only exception is local property tax ("Council tax"), which partially props up the funding of local government. But that's capped, and most local authorities charge the maximum. So it might as well be paid by central government, out of the general fund.

[Edit] I take your point about regressive/progressive. The Vox article didn't use the term "progressive"; they said "broad-based". It's right that a tax-hike should hit everybody; but it's also fair that it should hit high earners harder than the poor, roughly in proportion to what they earn.

Wealth tax, as a tax on savings and property, is iniquitous.

Curb stomp them please, thanks.

I'm not sure I've ever seen such a casual use of such violent imagery. I did not care for it.

Personally I hope this apppies to “resort fees” at hotels; it’s ridiculous that hotels can have a mandatory fee that they can exclude from their posted price.

Oh, believe me, state Senator Nancy Skinner, requiring businesses to disclose these fees up front is not going to make these purchases any more affordable. Companies will either maintain the fees but comply with the disclosure requirement or remove the fees and jack up the base price accordingly. Either way, the goods and services they sell will not magically become cheaper.

What it will do, however, is level the playing field, which is good for competition, and may have some indirect benefits for consumers. So I'm very much in support of requiring up-front pricing. (In fact, it would be lovely to see pricing that's inclusive of all taxes as well.)

Verizon can f off, 20%+ extra "fees" all the time.. glad I'm done with them.

Seems kind of like hidden fees to me... folks livign out of state, but went on vacation to CA, or flew to the the bay area on a business trip, or whatever...

The biggest hidden fee of all time is CA taxing out of state entities.

But at the very final point they hide it from you, which is absolutely insane it's even legal.

    Smart politics, but bad economics.

    Ban baggage fees = higher ticket prices
    Ban resort fees = higher room prices
    Ban credit card late fees = higher interest rates

    These proposals just make some consumers pay more to cover the costs of other consumers.

There is a point hidden in there, in that banning optional fees makes the price go up for people who refuse the option.

But when the fee is mandatory, hiding it is basically pure evil.

Much more developed argument than my pure evil comment: https://www.slowboring.com/p/junk-fees

It's sad that we have to look to government to solve basic stuff like this. I'd rather not regulate everything to death but the alternative is annoying shit like this. Like I could try to go to another dog boarding place, but there just aren't that many of them and they probably do the same thing. I bet they're all owned by the same private equity firm anyway.

Thus, there is a huge incentive for companies to lower the base price and then get it back with these types of fees. Even if they didn't add BS fees, this ease of price comparison has resulted in unbundling of services in a number of industries - e.g. airlines where the base price is akin to "we let you hang on to the wing", and everything else is an upcharge.

This is also a case where consumers say they want one thing, but their behavior is a different matter. For example, pretty much everyone says they prefer the full price to be shown up front in search result pages. But, as someone who is privy to a ton of A/B testing in this area, the opposite nearly always results in higher conversion, where there is a lower up-front price and fees are only tacked on during checkout.

To be clear, I'm 100% in favor of this regulation because I think it's the perfect example of where what is good for any individual company leads to a dysfunctional market, and so government can provide a level playing field. Heck, I think many businesses would support this change, because they no longer need to try to one-up their competitors by overcomplicating their pricing structure.

This seems to be very misguided logic to me. I can also trick people with fraud but that doesn't mean the victims are indifferent to the fraud. It being effective doesn't mean people like it. Consumers can still hate this hidden fee approach even, and perhaps especially, because it is effective.

> Centred Justification

> When prices are printed in neat, right-justified columns, everyone glances down the line to compare prices. Menu consultants recommend a centred justification that leaves the prices scattered. This gently encourages the diner to order what she wants, not pick the cheapest price. Another way of minimising attention to cost? Omit the pound signs.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-hidden-psychology-of-men...

(See "Veblen goods".)

So, noone who goes to a place like this cares if one soup is $12 and the other $14 and then pick the cheaper one... but if you have a $79 bottle of wine on the menu and a $7900 bottle of wine on the menu, it's in the interest of the restaurant to have the patrons know clearly that the expensive bottle is really really expensive, and having deceptive pricing there ("$7.9 per 0.7ml") only causes problems when the check arrives.

That is hilariously brutal. Oh no!

Although, bouncers have to distinguish eg. solo german men from eg. balkan construction workers, because the scam is somewhat less effective on those.

example:

https://twitter.com/KSHB41/status/1158871610876682240?lang=p...

The .99 pricing thing is associated with "trying to make it look cheaper", so a restaurant that puts round prices is trying to send the opposite message: we're not cheap.

Going back to the airline example, most people say they hate getting nickel and dimed on things like paying to pick a seat up front or paying even for the first carry-on, but they will still pick one flight over another if the base rate is $5 cheaper. And in that case there is nothing untoward, fraudulent or "dark pattern" about what the airline is doing, as they are just allowing people to only pay for the services they want. But it's still a clear case of consumers saying they want one thing, but by their actions they are incentivizing airlines to do something else.

But regardless of the underlying reason, I still agree that the best solution is for government to provide "ground rules" that most people agree are better. After all, most consumers would probably prefer cheaper products even if manufacturers used child labor or had no pollution controls, but it's the government's role to ensure these longer term societal goals aren't completely ignored in pursuit of the cheapest price.

Nah, it’s fraud. It’s a minor, lightweight fraud, but it’s still fraud.

These companies are just lying to customers to get what they want, that’s fraud.

There’s a veneer of legality to it, because they tell you the price before the “contract” is legally complete, but only after making the customer jump through a few hurdles.

The entire point is to make the customer do enough work before you show them the actual price, that they just give up and deal with it.

It’s a moral fraud, even if not legally fraud. Even if not on the dotted line, they’re forcing the customer to spend their time on it under false pretenses, in the hope that the sunk cost is enough to trap the customer.

My definition of fraud is: “lying to someone to induce them to do something they wouldn’t have done without the lie”.

I think the hidden pricing lines up neatly with my definition.

What’s your definition? (We don’t need to come to an agreement, just curious how you think about it)

Can you think of another word for that? It’s an untrue statement about the price, that they know is untrue. I just can’t think of another word to describe that other than “a lie”.

If the hidden fees were optional, I could see it being a closer call. If I can uncheck the cleaning fee and actually get $199/night, then it’s not as much a lie. This is the budget airline model. A super super cheap flight, but if you want to put a bag in the overhead bin that’s an extra cost. I think there’s something somewhat deceptive about that practice, but I wouldn’t call it a lie.

But, really, if they say a cost is $199/night when the minimum cost is $250/night and they know that to be the case, how can that be anything other than a lie?

1. Pretty much every retail store in existence in the US, because sales taxes aren't calculated until checkout. The sign in the aisle says "3.99" but the minimum you can pay for it is 3.99 x .08 or whatever, so according to your definition that's lying.

2. Every online retail store that charges for shipping and handling, because those charges aren't calculated until checkout (usually because they are variable). Again, according to you, another instance of lying.

3. Even your cleaning fee example isn't as cut-and-dry as you make it out to be. Cleaning fees for vacation rentals are usually assessed only once per stay (i.e. for cleaning the room after checkout), so including the cleaning fee into the nightly rate isn't accurate, even if I enter my rental dates while searching. A place that charges $199/night but has a $100 cleaning fee may or may not be a better deal than a $250/night place with a $40 cleaning fee, depending on my length of stay. If I just lump that in with a nightly rate, and my dates are flexible, I lose information about which place may be the better deal.

4. I've seen customers get irate and demand something was "fraud" when a vacation rental had parking fees. The parking fees were clearly spelled out in the contract (but, again, only on checkout). But this truly is an optional fee - many customers would Uber or whatever to get to the rental without a car. What determined whether the customer thought it was "fraud" was their own personal expectations about what should be included, even if other customers didn't share those expectations.

Furthermore, many/most of these sites that only show details of fees on checkout still say "plus fees" or "plus S/H" on search result pages. Is it still fraud if they tell you there are fees upfront but don't actually tell you what those fees are until checkout?

In general, I just find it very distasteful when folks try to redefine words that have pretty straightforward meanings to meet their personal definition of the what they think the word should mean, especially for topics that have gray areas, and especially when there are other words that better encompass the idea that you're making a statement of opinion rather than fact. E.g. I think most people wouldn't mind you saying "Their marketing practices are deceptive", because most people would think there is some amount of opinion into what constitutes deception, but most people think of fraud as much more of a clear-and-dry instance of lying for financial gain.

Which is, of course, insane. There is no good reason for taxes to not be rolled into the price. What next? An 'employee wages' line item that gets added at checkout? Maybe a 'mall rental space' one? A 'shareholder dividend' one?

> 2. Every online retail store that charges for shipping and handling.

Depending on where they ship, those are at least unknown until checkout.

> 3. Even your cleaning fee example isn't as cut-and-dry as you make it out to be. Cleaning fees for vacation rentals are usually assessed only once per stay (i.e. for cleaning the room after checkout), so including the cleaning fee into the nightly rate isn't accurate, even if I enter my rental dates while searching.

Rental availability is only known when you enter a date range. If you've entered a date range, there's no reason the fees can't be included in the price. There's nothing fraudulent about selling 5 nights for $180/night, versus 4 nights for $195/night, just like there's nothing fraudulent about charging more for 2x2L jugs of milk than for 1x4L jug.

> 4. I've seen customers get irate and demand something was "fraud" when a vacation rental had parking fees.

Unlike #1 and #3 (Sales tax, cleaning fees), parking fees really are optional.

I think a big part of the point is to compete on search (aggregate search like travel sites especially) with the company's competitors. The first company to start, say, charging for a carry-on realizes that they are forcing everyone to copy that, but for a while they'll have an advantage and make more profit. Any business leader doing this first is trying to dishonestly game the system. The others are just doing what they now have to do to keep the playing field level.

On aggregating vacation rental sites, the owners that choose not to do this (at least on sites like VRBO) can add "no service or management costs" to their listings, or maybe "no hidden costs", but it is not very effective because if you are charging $225 and the customer is searching in the range $100 - $200, you loose and the person advertising a $199.00/night charge (with management fee added later) wins.

And, again, as far as fraud goes I think this is on the fairly low end of frauds.

But, “hey, lots of other people are committing this fraud” goes into the bucket of “helps the person committing fraud sleep at night”.

I do tend to hold the platforms themselves (AirBnB, VRBO) more responsible than the individual hosts that list on these platforms.

It just shouldn’t be possible to even present listings with hidden fees on the platforms. So, in general I look at this as 90% AirBNBs fault, and 10% the individual hosts fault.

I notice VRBO has a search by nightly rate and a search by total cost, so at least you can choose "deceive me" or "don't deceive me".

The customer assumes that all those other prices would also be lowballing them and that if they went back and chose one they’d end up with an even higher final bill.

Starting with the lowest base price seems like a good strategy to get the lowest total price when all the prices are up charged the same.

Unless they’re way more expensive, I’ll still pick them for a slightly higher price over the others, because I know that I’ll get a good experience and it’ll be way less stressful. They also always have staff available in the airport when things go wrong.

Frontier has been doing this thing where they make everyone put their backpack into the little measuring box so they have a chance to charge you $100 for being an inch oversized. They haven’t gotten me on that personally, but I’ve sworn off of flying with them entirely because it’s like they want you to suffer. I have 40 other complaints about them but I’ll save it for now

I don’t support hidden fees but I think price discrimination based on usage is totally reasonable. Just make the costs up front.

The other flight also tricks you with in-flight purchase of air, so, might as well choose the lowest base price.

That may be true, but those are measuring two separate things - customer desires and customer behavior. Just because it results in more sales doesn't actually mean the customer still wants that. I know I didn't when I rented a car recently but I was pretty much stuck when picking up the car at the airport. I would have definitely found another solution if I knew upfront how much the real cost was going to be.

  > This is also a case where consumers say they want one
  thing, but their behavior is a different matter. For
  example, pretty much everyone says they prefer the full
  price to be shown up front in search result pages. But,
  as someone who is privy to a ton of A/B testing in this
  area, the opposite nearly always results in higher
  conversion, where there is a lower up-front price and
  fees are only tacked on during checkout.

  the opposite nearly always results in higher
  conversion, where there is a lower up-front price and
  fees are only tacked on during checkout.

Basically the top of the funnel is more price sensitive than after they have already progressed a bit towards the purchase.

Everyone else gets it. You're not preaching some great message to the sheeple, you're just making noise.

On HN you’ll see a similar dynamic with privacy, business ethics, etc.: people say they don’t like being tracked but won’t even try using a browser other than Chrome or worry about local businesses but won’t consist paying +-10% more not to buy through Amazon.

That's probably the most accurate way to state the "preference".

[1] the current workaround is dealers listing the MSRP on their websites and arguing that that isn't an advertised sale price... but at least that only works for new cars.

People don't like being stolen from, but if you can get away with it, it must be a good thing

Consumers still understand the total cost, albeit at the end. We aren't tricked into accepting it most of the times.

Take Airbnb for example. Consumers compare and find listings, but at checkout, the extra charges get added. They see what they will pay, but at this point they just "accept it", rather than starting over again.

That's the point. These sorts of hidden fees are used to trick consumers. A consumer who just read through two different website offerings, only to see a hidden fee at the end of each likely will give up, despite not actually understanding any more about which possible offering is the lower-cost offering.

Hidden fees are literally lying to the consumers. No the offering isn't actually $0.99, it's $271.

Consumers are very consistent here. You are comparing what consumers want: clear, upfront pricing so they can pick the lowest cost option, with what companies want: more sales. The fact that putting your pricing upfront causes you to lose customers because your competition is hiding costs is as you point out a dysfunctional market problem. But the consumers involved are not being hypocritical.

Also being privy to A/B testing in this area, I can tell you that we developers would looooove this kind of regulation so we don't have to build these kinds of dark patterns while holding our noses and telling ourselves that at least the pay is good.

Vast majority of A/B testing schemes that do gotcha pricing cannot measure the 'credit rating' that your essentially burning by doing this, and it's only sustainable if they don't have any other choice of place that doesn't do this. It's classic short term PM metrics hacking in exchange for hurting the business or industry overall.

Unfortunately in many cases "short term" here is long enough to force/encourage the competition to follow suit so you get entire sectors where there is no choice.

<cough> I'm literally just booking a trip with Ryanair, Vienna to London, in just less than a month's time. It's costing me a shade less than $20 for a 770 mile flight, no hidden fees during my purchase...

No, it doesn't include a large carry-on bag, never mind a checked bag.

No, it doesn't include priority boarding.

No, it doesn't include reserved seating.

No, I won't earn any frequent-flyer miles/elite status.

Also, the in-flight F+B will be overpriced, so it's safer not to waste money there either.

However, for a two-hour flight and a short trip, I don't need any of those things!

I just want to get from A to B, safely, and preferably on-time. FR is at least as likely to do those two things as any of the 'legacy' carriers I could pick instead.

It’s the non-optional fees—- resort, regulatory compliance, or living wage—-that are truly pernicious.

"Resort fees" or "amenity fees" are not optional. Even if you don't use the services in those fees, you still have to pay them. Those are what are being clamped down on.

I was responding to the comment about what the airlines' base price includes - at least here on this side of the pond, the base price is for safe travel (with a small carry-on bag) from A to B, and if that's all you want, it's all you need to pay.

I was surprised to see that spirit is one of the most consistently on time airlines in the US. They really do provide exactly the service I'm looking for.

You think your customers don't know what they're talking about...because the data you gleaned from abusing them says otherwise?

Dictator logic: "My approval rate is 100%! People clearly love what I'm doing!"

I suspect this might be the case initially, but eventually consumers will get fed up with being tricked again and again and refuse to deal with that particular industry (and A/B testing won't predict that).

I know this is the case for myself and local services (e.g. cleaning, lawn mowing, appliance repair). I literally will not search for any of those things because I don't want to have to sort through bullshit.

Same thing for restaurants that expect a tip. I might uncomfortably pay it, but would never go back there. (note: tipping culture is very different in Australia compared to the US, as are minimum wage laws. Your local barrista is probably getting $35+ an hour on a weekend.)

That is evidence that bait and switch works, not that people want it.

I'd like to not be swindled, but if the marketplace is half-swindlers and half-honest people, it's highly likely I'll be taken in by the former. What the kind of heuristic am I expected to use to avoid getting swindled?

Giant, bold text that says "price is all-inclusive. No additional fees!"

Customer: What is this extra fee on my bill?

Business: There is no extra fee.

Customer: It's this number right here. That's a fee. Why is it there?

Business: No no no. That's not a fee. It's for your benefit.

Consumer: What does that even mean?

Business: That's a final emolument that is used to keep costs for consumers low and fee-free. Everybody pays it, since it is for your safety and benefit.

By requiring part of the fee to be paid directly to the hotel at check-in, it means the hotel gets to keep more of their revenue.

The issue isn't that everything is an upcharge.

I have no problem with having options. I actually like being able to pay less when I don't need the added options.

With airlines, (at least here in EU) you pretty much know what the base price buys you and that everything is an option on top of it. And as long as the options are reasonable (like paying for additional luggage) I think this is very defensible from the standpoint of making product better and more affordable to people (who don't necessarily need additional luggage, for example).

The issue is in many cases there is not even a possibility to buy the product/service for the advertised price and they will make difficult for you to find out what you are going to pay until it is too late or you have invested time/effort. It is a restaurant where the charges are added to your bill (the tip no longer being voluntary) or a shop where they try to recoup some of their losses with an exaggerated shipment fees. Or when you suddenly find out a critical part of your product is sold separately. Or you buy a printer and then they try to scam you by selling the ink/toner for more than the price of the printer.

This just shows how much of a bubble sales people are in. Just because your sales data shows a better profit it doesn't mean it's not fraudulent.

This legislation wouldn't stop that, nor resort fees, because they're not required.

It would however effect Airbnb, one of the worst offenders, because their fees are mandatory and not shown until checkout.

It's funny the government has exempted its own taxes and fees (the largest last minute fees we all pay everyday) from this requirement.

StubHub tried to do the right thing here, even touting their all-in pricing as an advantage over competitors - and customers still preferred their competitors' more opaque pricing practices anyway.

Point being, no company can afford to "do the right thing" if their competitors can do the "wrong thing" and be rewarded for that wrong thing. This is when government should step in.

We used to live in communities, whereing social mores were at least nominally respected or accepted. Even if they were broken, at minimum 'wrong was wrong' and in particular, reputation mattered.

We later moved into larger corporate entities wherein mores could be sidelined, and now we've flipped the game entirely and there are few civic questions to contemplate. It's just "The Funnel" and that's it.

Even if most people don't fully buy Milton Friedman's Chicago School 'the motive is only profit' stuff, the ideal set it.

VC-land and the Valley never even talk bother about civic good, consumer surplus etc. other than maybe in some situations a kind of DEI/Climate specific kind of ideological way. The baseline assumption is 'the product must be doing some kind of 'good' and if not who cares'. Commerce is generally positive but it's pretty easy to see where the frayed edeges are.

Dark Patterns abound, even by supposedly reputable companies. I don't think people realize how perverse this is and how it strongly degrades civil life. It's not good that we have to be worried about how we are being ripped off / misled by major companies we are supposed to trust.

Paradoxically, in the long run, most of it is not worth it. A small optimization in the funnel is not going to change anything.

This would actually be a better situation. Instead the base price is "this would be what we would theoretically charge you to hang onto the wing, but since that's not legally allowed there's no possible way anyone could buy a ticket for this price." If they were selling food like that, there would be a "state-inspected and legal to sell quality upcharge."

This maximizes what the consumer receives per dollar spent, because they can easily compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges across many competitors.

How about this for an A/B test (rhetorical): show consumers one universe where perfect competition is enforced like I describe above, and one universe where most market participants bait and switch customers, forcing them to shop for hours and then ending up paying more for less.

Or compare shopping at the grocery store vs shopping even the most fungible medical procedures between 2 hospitals :) (if you can even manage to shop the latter)

If you think consumers like to be tricked, you either need to zoom out of the narrow context where that seems to be true, or you’re financially incentivized to swindle the plebs.

I'll restate what at least one other commenter pointed out. If I, a consumer, say "I want transparent pricing," and then given transparent pricing I'm less likely to buy your product, that doesn't mean I was mistaken. It means the truth is that I don't want to buy your product, and you would have to lie to me in order to make a purchase more likely.

Why that exclusion? Why not require the price on the label to be the price you pay?

But should not be a requirement for products where I would need to pay my local tax as that would require me to enter my location and would not provide any interesting extra information between products.

Hidden fees are for items that are broken out from the sales price and they aren’t optional. A good example used earlier in this thread is hotel resort fees. Even if you don’t use any of the amenities that the charge is for, you are still charged that fee and it isn’t part of the advertised price.

I don't get it, so it's OK for government to hide its fees but not the business?

I wish the government were to lead by example and also try to eliminate hidden government fees. Here in California, different cities can have different sales tax, and knowing the final price can seem like a guessing game.

I would love if taxes, tips, and other business fees were all included in a final price that were stated upfront.

Other way round; the bill would make it mandatory to include all fees except the government's fees.

>>> “Californians are sick and tired of dishonest fees being tacked on to seemingly everything,” said state Senator Bill Dodd. “It’s an underhanded trick...

Why do government-imposed fees get a special exemption these "dishonest" and "underhanded" tricks? :thinking:

;)

Note: In Europe, the advertised price always includes the related taxes: https://www.quora.com/Do-prices-in-Europe-include-taxes

How does that work for prices in broadcast ads that reach multiple countries? VAT can vary from country to country so which country's VAT rate do you use in the ad?

When I first got to the USA one of my first culture shocks I experienced was having sales tax added onto the advertised prices (something I had never seen before, and came to me as a bit scummy). Also it can be argued that tips is a hidden fee. In other countries where tips is optional, it is still advertised in the final price as service fee, in the USA it is hardly even optional since in many states the workers are working far below minimum wage and wouldn’t be able to work there without the tips.

Uber famously did this with a safety fee when there was a string of negative news reports. What did this fee do? Literally nothing. They just pocketed it.

Airbnb is an obvious one of course.

Whenever I see anything like lack of transparent pricing and the necessary for such legislation, I have to chuckle at the expense of anarchists and libertarians because a strong government is necessary for any market to function. How are there any anarchists or libertarians at all?

IMO, taxes need to be part of the advertised price.

Part of the reason we tolerate hidden fees in the US is because we're used to paying more than the sticker price for something because it doesn't include taxes (and tip.)

If I lived in CA, I'd contact my reps and ask them to redo the bill to also include taxes and tips. It's not right to eliminate some kinds of hidden fees while still keeping government hidden fees.

kthxbai

I wish it included the taxes and government fees also. The whole hidden fee culture seems to be enabled by us all being so accustomed to paying extra at checkout.

Many people think they only pay 7.5% and the company pays the other 7.5% but this is wrong. The employee pays the whole 15%, they just don't see it come out of their check.

Does that count as a "hidden fee?" What about VAT taxes?

You pay online, then you show up and they demand $90 for cleaning and other fees. I hope this goes through and moves us towards a sane direction.

I started writing this comment as a joke, but I no longer am sure that it is.

The resort fee scam has spread to other areas. Where do you think Ticketmaster and airlines got the idea to deconstruct their pricing schemes? How about restaurants now adding fees in the fine print for everything from mandated health care to “area marketing plans” to higher cfedit card charges…instead of simply adjusting prices on the menu?

This consumer fraud has been ongoing since at least 1994 in Hawaii and 2010 elsewhere it escaped its “Maui Quarantine”. It is long past time that honesty in pricing be recognized and an enforced as a basic consumer protection.

The tiny libertarian inside of me recoils at the description of taxes as legitimate, but that's a point for a different type of discussion. I'd just like to call attention to the concept of hidden fees being called out. And remember, that's fees, as in plural.

Government officials are pointing out that multiple end of sale charges can be confusing and misleading dark patterns? Ok, great, lets analyze that logic through for consistency.

Governments are engaging in the same bullshit.

Look at how many Government Fees and taxes are on my basic phone bill.

> City District Sales Tax - Telecom

> City Sales Tax - Telecom

> County Public Safety Communications Surcharge

> State Sales Tax - Telecom

> State Public Safety Communications Surcharge

There might be at least a few more, but I can't quite confirm if they're actually taxes or not.

You might say that paying a tax is a necessary part of a functional society. Again, I'm not here to debate that.

But why the bullshit with having an entire pile of random taxes given in a piecemeal fashion? If it's misleading and complicated for consumers to understand payments with 500 different surcharges and fees, certainly consumers also aren't understanding their true tax burden if they're nickle and dimed with tons of extra taxes that are only visible at the end of the process and not spelled out up front. If it's good for consumers to know about all of their commercial fees, shouldn't the same logic apply to taxation? Shouldn't voters be made to understand their true tax burden in the simplest fashion possible?