411–420 of 981 posts
So Obama wanted to wanted to ban the penny, but it was deemed illegal to do so and efforts to get rid of the law requiring it did not pass: * https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/10/trump-us-mi... * https://www.local3news.com/obama-wants-to-retire-the-penny-b... It's not that keeping the penny around is (necessarily) a good idea, but that there are, you know, laws, and people (including the President and cab…
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> State and local taxes make this infeasible I don’t see why that would be the case? In my country, most prices with VAT (which is what you’re charged) are nice, round numbers, but not the price without VAT. I suppose the stores set a target price, and then adjust it a bit to make the price + VAT a “nice” number. Is there a reason that couldn’t be done to make all prices + VAT multiples of 5c?
Several reasons, it really is a mess. The local tax is set by multiple independent tax authorities that change their taxes independently, the tax you see is the aggregate of those independent authorities computed separately, which do not coordinate with each other. Some of these taxes are conditional at point-of-sale, late-binding the taxes, such that different customers are subject to different rates across these ta…
Having lived in Europe, this should be changed. It makes it infeasible to keep track of your total bill as you shop. The amount without tax should be printed on the receipt, if you care to reference it.
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I addressed in another reply that "'none' is all that's necessary" is probably a defensible interpretation of the law (the more relevant portion being in 5111 rather than 5112), but the penny being explicitly listed makes it clearly not the intention of congress. That's why I said it's a "shaky" and not "baseless" legal ground. The law is clearly written with the expectation that there will be some , which is why Con…
You're right, 5111 is more pertinent here. 5111(a)(1) says “shall mint and issue coins” but qualifies it explicitly with “in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States”. This is a clear delegation of authority. If you don't think zero pennies is a permissible amount, what about one penny? Two? What minimum number are you arguing for here, and what's your justification for it? I…
In fact they have introduced a bill to do just that, that has not passed yet, which means they have not done that.
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The US has too many tax permutations for this to be practicable. Companies would have to make prices a bit higher to accommodate unexpected sales tax increases in some or other jurisdiction. There's a small industry that specializes in knowing what the sales tax for a particular transaction should be at the moment it goes through.
Knowing the sales tax at a particular in-person store is more feasible, and that’s the only case where you have to deal with cash. If I’m buying online with a digital transaction you can charge whatever cents are necessary.
Right now, a company can say they sell gadget X for $999, which would not be possible if they had to work out item taxes.
The other possibility is that they now have to mark X up to take into account the most pessimistic possible tax rate and advertise the marked-up rate.
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just make the price a multiple of five cents
State and local taxes make this infeasible
Of course, retailers don't want tax-inclusive posted prices, but... ::shrug::
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Now people stop shopping at your store.
If the store is e.g. Walmart, then their scale's already large enough that I don't think this is going to put them under. And if every store's doing it, then there'll be nowhere to turn to.
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As the article points out, there are laws that say people who pay via SNAP debit cards "cannot be charged more than others". If cash payments are rounded down, but debit card payments aren't, they are in violation of state law. The article also points out that rollback of pennies in Canada and other places were planned, addressing these kinds of issues. USA is doing it with no such planning.
The article also points out that some states and a lot cities require retailers to provide exact change. Congress would need to pass legislation to allow rounding nationally. I'm guessing in the meantime they'll continue holding pennies from previous years?
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It doesn't cost anyone anything. They can just raise prices 3 cents or whatever.
The statistics on consumers evaluating the purchase of something that is $9.99 vs $10 is well proven. Switching to round number prices would cost retailers a whole lot more. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243599... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23547242_Penny_Wise... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243590...
Again: Canada actually did this many years ago. The effect you predict did not appear.