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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

cnn.com

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Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#491

Post by IshKebab »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #80
nayuki wrote: post #20

We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, but a few would round down to the nearest $0.05 in favor of the customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination... Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: No penny, durable polymer banknotes (instead of dirty wrinkly c…

American banknotes have numbers on them to easily distinguish the different values!

This is a joke right?

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#493

Post by rtkwe »

simpleguitar wrote: post #273
b112 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're referencing more than pennies, but to speak to pennies, I find the current rounding noise in the US to be weird. Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story. Back when we did it in Canada, I don't recall a single person I knew concerned about penny rounding. Everyone was sick of pennies. No one cared. Everyone was happy. An…

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.

More annoying especially during the SNAP gap due to the shutdown the law forbids differential pricing in general so shops couldn't offer lower prices for EBT/SNAP customers as a way to help their neighbors.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#494

Post by geophile »

This is a very minor but pleasant surprise. An action like this is beyond what I thought the US government (my government, sadly) was capable of. It is kind of puzzling to me that this issue, like every other one, didn't get politicized, with right wing talking heads bemoaning progress of any sort, appealing to the good old days, when America was great, the days that MAGAs want to return to.

It's a good start. Now let's do metric.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#495

Post by dmoy »

jcranmer wrote: post #490
bjourne wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er... So just adjust prices to whole multiples of 5 cents? Helps math-challenged cashiers too...

Prices in the US are not tax-inclusive, so the effect of sales tax ruins that plan.

And sales tax varies a loooooot, and change constantly

There's 12000+ distinct sales tax regimes in the US

https://sovos.com/content-library/sut/state-by-state-guide-t...

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#497

Post by axiolite »

estimator7292 wrote: post #290
mattnewton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State and local taxes make this infeasible

With some 5th grade algebra, one can adjust the total of a transaction to result in a round number after taxes. Besides that, the law (at least where I live) is that the tax must be paid, but it does not specify by whom . It's completely feasible for a retailer to pay the 2 cent difference in the tax and charge the customer a round number. Is this really the state of American education where a percentage calculation…

Even with just a 6% tax, you end up with prices that need 4 digits of precision after the decimal (e.g.: $11.6494). That issue extends over a wide range of pre-tax/input prices, so one would have to DRASTICALLY change the prices so that the price including 6% tax rounds to even a penny, let alone a nickel.

While you could calculate a price that (after tax) would round a single item to the nearest nickel, it's completely IMPOSSIBLE to do so with unknown numbers of multiple items.

In addition, tax rates in the real world aren't just single-digit percentages. They have precision of 1/1000th of a percent, making such a calculation much more challenging.

Arizona: 10.725% Hawaii: 4.712% Minnesota: 7.875% etc.

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

And sales tax rates can be different from ONE CITY BLOCK TO THE NEXT, so a company with more than one location would find it IMPOSSIBLE to advertise their prices at all.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#498

Post by philistine »

simpleguitar wrote: post #273
b112 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're referencing more than pennies, but to speak to pennies, I find the current rounding noise in the US to be weird. Likely, it's just more of the media, talking heads, and youtube personalities trying to turn a nothing into something, story. Back when we did it in Canada, I don't recall a single person I knew concerned about penny rounding. Everyone was sick of pennies. No one cared. Everyone was happy. An…

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.

I don't want to be glib, but hey what the hey. This is how you can see that the United States is in decline; it can no longer discontinue a coin through legislation.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#499

Post by rtkwe »

a_c_s wrote: post #458
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #113

Some interesting complications with rounding I had not heard about before were mentioned here, worth noting I think, especially given the prominence of SNAP in the news lately: >Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change, according to the National Association of Convenience…

Right, but getting fined in this situation means the government is incompetent. They should just tell retailers the "right" thing to do and not fine any retailers that follow the guidelines. The idea that this is complicated legally is an example of why so many Americans are so frustrated with their government. Common sense should rule the day, not mindless legalism.

The issue with "common sense" is there's no way to run anything based on it because you'll get 100 different ideas of what that means in any situation. 90% of customers would be fine with the rounding to the nearest 5 cent plan but there's a streak of stubborn people who'd refuse to accept it and waste some legal time trying to get proven 'right' so the stores want legal clarity so they don't have to deal with that.

Re: The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

#500

Post by giantg2 »

toast0 wrote: post #448
giantg2 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet they have a way to write it off. Edit: why disagree? Can't the write it off as a loss, uncollected account, or promotional? Maybe even goodwill

Writing it off as a loss isn't useful. Without a write off, their income is $X (what they actually collected), with a write off, their income is $Z (what they should have collected) - $Y (what they didn't collect), but $X = $Z - $Y. There's no material difference between counting what they actual collect as income vs what they should have collected minus the goodwill discount. Unless there's some specific tax justifi…

Why wouldn't the write off be useful? I think your formual needs to add "+ ($Y x .3)" for tax deduction if you frame as promotional or other tax write off strategies.

It won't be the same as what they would have collected without rounding, but it will be better than if you didn't write off anything.

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