Not likely; sales tax is extremely complicated in the US. There are 13,000 sales tax jurisdictions, and many of them have different and incompatible rules for things like sales tax nexus.

I think legitster is suggesting that the sticker price on the product should be the price paid, rather than a uniform sales tax code. If the seller knows what to charge the buyer, then they know what they need to put on the sticker.

Local retailers would oppose this in very strong terms as a thumb on the scale in favor of online retailers.

Online retailers would presumably still be able to show pricing before knowing a shipping address, so their pricing would be pre-tax. That would make the apparent price differential even greater, and on every item.

I think this would make the marketplace less clear for consumers.

Online retailers could be required to use the best available estimate of the user's location to calculate the tax, like they do for ads.

So if they are logged in with an address on file, it could be that. If not, they could use geolocation, with a note that the tax is estimated. And let the user input a location in a box to show the exact tax.

> they could use geolocation, with a note that the tax is estimated

So we'd go from the current regime where the displayed price is wrong to another regime where the displayed price is wrong? Allegedly, something like 40%+ of Americans use VPNs. They would pretty much always see the wrong price.

In practice, the ramification of this would be that your local indie retailers (where we are much less likely to be persistently logged in) would be forced to incorrectly show higher prices to a set of people, while the giant retailers who already have your billing info can show you 100% accurate pricing all the time, regardless of VPN.

I don't see any clear wins in that scenario.

40% of Americans using VPNs cannot possibly be true.

Sounded off to me, but I wasn't able to find a better number when I looked. Maybe it's counting work computers where the stack is maintained by IT staff?

Oddly enough, the average EU consumer has no problem understanding that the label price is the full price of a purchase, while online prices might include extra stuff such as delivery.

Maybe you're just less intelligent than the average consumer and need some more protection? Or is it something else?

> Maybe you're just less intelligent than the average consumer

I'm not one to police tone, but really? Did it make you feel better to say that?

> is it something else?

Yes, the something else is that you're missing the point that my comment was specifically about the disparity in the prices large online retailers would be able to display (e.g. without sales tax) versus what offline retailers would display (with sales tax).

If Amazon and a local retailer are both aiming for the same $1,000 for an item net of tax, this would mean that Amazon could display $1,000 as the price while my local retailer would have to list it for (say) $1,100. I don't think local retailers would like that very much, even though the consumer would end up paying $1,100 either way. You may disagree.

A business already has to take care of the sales tax. So they can just show it on the price tag.

No they cannot. Taxes are not uniform. Walmart probably won't deal with this, but in many states business (read farmers) do not pay sales tax on some items (read likely to be used on a farm) and so stores that want to sell to business will have the ability to verify you are a business to give that discount.

It is worse for online where until you log in they have no clue what taxes will apply. If you are buying a gift for someone in a different area I don't know what tax rules apply but there is good odds they won't know until you get to the shipping information what the real taxes are.

> but in many states business (read farmers) do not pay sales tax on some items (read likely to be used on a farm)

The legislation in most of europe clearly handles this - the price displayed is for the intended customer. If you go into B&Q (home depot equivalent), you'll see prices including sales tax. If you go next door to a timber merchant none of the prices have sales tax included. If you're a business, you don't pay the sales tax. The businesses know what their taxes are, and are required to have accurate accounts anyway. For those that are maybe numerically challenged - they'll never pay more than they see on the sticker.

> It is worse for online where until you log in they have no clue what taxes will apply.

Enter your shipping address to see pricing. Exactly the same as it is now. Give an estimate based on IP. Exactly how it works in Europe, which has the same problem.

The issue with online sales is real, but customers exempt from sales tax could just have their final price lowered. That would be the opposite of the current situation. Since there are many fewer tax-exempt sales, and tax-exempt buyers are presumably more sophisticated and less price-sensitive, this would be a net win for customers.

If you sell a widget in a store, you MUST be able to compute the sales tax. Otherwise, you can't sell it.

And if you can do that, then you might as well print it on the price tag (along with pre-tax price if you want). No buts.

Ditto for online, after you get the customer's ZIP code.

My favorite example of this lunacy is the restaurant nearby that sells pies. If they box your pie for you to take home, it's a grocery item and not taxed. If they give you utensils to eat it in the store, it's a restaurant meal and therefore taxed.

They literally can't know the price until you tell them whether you'd like a fork with it.

Now, this restaurant works around it by having both prices listed, but I can imagine a million freaking variants of that for an online sale: "you have to pay our local taxes, but almost maybe yours, unless you check out on a Sunday between noon and 5PM, which is a tax holiday on your block (but not your neighbors' across the road), so understand that the price may change between when you add it to your cart and when you click the 'pay' button."

I'm only a little bit exaggerating.

Then put two freaking price tags: "pies to go" and "eat here". Problem solved.

There are zero legitimate reasons not to show true prices.

Stopped reading after the first paragraph, huh.

You can't print the price on a price tag because different customer pay different prices.

Bullshit. First, you absolutely CAN JUST PUT TWO PRICES on a price tag. Moreover, business customers (in a grocery shop, yeah right) can just get a discount at a point of sale.

> And if you can do that, then you might as well print it on the price tag (along with pre-tax price if you want).

Fun fact: sales tax rates are not stable. Our state publishes quarterly tax changes at the county level; city-level changes are presumably too numerous for the state to publish in the same format.

Inclusive pricing can obviously be done in-store, but it also more or less ensures that some of the items in your store will have incorrect prices some of the time.

At least here in California, the state collects the sales tax on behalf of all the local jurisdictions, so they publish and update them all simultaneously (twice a year) and in the same format.

Interesting...there must be a state law that requires jurisdictions to synchronize any changes to sales tax rates to a single calendar.

Technically, jurisdictions could try to collect the taxes directly, but they generally lack the infrastructure for it, and it isn't feasible to set it up. Instead, they must play by the state's rules if they want the state to collect for them. Jurisdictions also can't customize exemptions; they can only add an incremental percentage amount to the existing general state sales tax. In general, it's in everyone's best interest to play along.

and service fees at restaurants. The price on the menu in Seattle or SF is ~25% lower than what the product actually costs.

Minnesota banned these this year! It goes into effect Jan 1st. https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/05/20/governor-signs-junk...

Imagine if that guy became VP...

We have a very nice little island of sanity up here :)

California was set to ban that, until Scott Weiner carved out an exception for restaurants.

His name sounds exactly like someone who'd sabotage a public benefit.

Count the service charge toward what you would’ve tipped.

Wait staff reading this: bosses at restaurants like this are stealing from you if that doesn’t go straight to you. I tip very well, but I’m not tipping twice. And yes, if it’s a “service charge”, that’s the same as saying “tip” from the customer’s perspective.

Would boycott get a chance? The honest restaurants bragging "NO FEES" would gather more customers and the others follow.

Wondering, is there already US places that works without tips like in most other places ? (Owner pays a decent salary to its employees, include that in all products they sell and don’t expect tips)

Various restaurant operators have experimented with what you described but haven't succeeded. The big issue is that servers hate it specifically because owners use the additional revenue to "pay a decent salary to their employees. " This generally includes all the employees, not just the formerly tipped ones. The kitchen staff ends up getting a significant pay bump, and servers get what amounts to a cut in their take-home pay.

At the higher end, the labor market for waitstaff is competitive, and restaurant operators who have experimented with this have had trouble keeping server positions filled (with the opposite effect in the kitchen).

Thanks. Perhaps what’s lacking is a legal decent minimum wage then.

Yeah, I love that healthcare surcharge at SFO restaurants.

Healthcare surcharge: 6%

tip: 20%

tax: 8.625%

= total: 34.625%

The healthcare surcharge is taxable, because it shouldn't exist, it should just be a 6% increase in the menu price.

what is a healthcare surcharge?

SF has something called Healthy SF where employers have to offer health insurance plans, or pay into a city-managed health account. I think the last time I looked, for a lot of businesses, it's basically a $2.25/hr raise for your employees.

edit: The best part is, if your employees don't use the money (maybe they don't know about it or don't have any health care expenses), the business can eventually reclaim it...

The restaurant association balked at this, and encouraged businesses to list out the increased cost as a separate line item on the receipt, instead of raising menu prices, basically raising a middle finger and saying "see what you idiots voted for, now you pay for it!" I don't know why I'd be mad that I have to pay for someone's health care. That's sort of how it works, doesn't it?

Since then, it has taken on a life of its own. Some places call it a health care surcharge. Others call it a SF surcharge, or a cost adjustment, or inflation fee. It's not a tax, it's not a service charge, it's not anything but whatever arbitrary number the business wants to charge without raising their menu price. And thus, it's taxable.

Move to Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire or Oregon. No sales tax.

most states have some trick.

I think you have to look at it wholistically:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Median_h...

Not a trick, just they get their income from other sources / taxes. But we're specifically talking about knowing the final price you will pay, in advance, which requires knowing the sales tax.

nitpick: "holistically"

Lol, I didn't even think when I wrote it that way. That said, it seems to be in the dictionary as an alternate spelling of holistic.

I guess the english language lets this stuff happen a lot, but not alot. I definitely did it by accident (not "on accident"!)

That's a state matter so not really within the FTC's jurisdiction I think.

Luckily some states (OR, AK, others) don't have a sales tax.