Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

Cook county tax 2.75% Illinois state tax 6.25% Chicago city tax 1.25%

This thing I bought had a sticker price of $11.90

How much did I pay?

Addendum: nevermind that during this whole time of unfortunate and now very slow because "mail" correspondence, especially when the circumstance described is of a bank re-ordering transactions such as to cause the most possible overdrafts given a time range, this person's whole paycheck they need to survive may have been trapped or eaten by the overdraft fees if there's 4 or 5 of them. Yes, some people make that little.

So the problem is that your rule impacts the prices everywhere that you see a price: any price you see online, in a poster, in a magazine, in a newspaper, in a mailer, on tv, or hear over the radio cannot include the correct taxes for where you pay for or receive the product/service.

The only place that can have the correct price is an in brick and mortar shop at the final point of sale, and even then some prices can be impacted by things like whether you're a retiree, disabled, veteran, etc. The lack of tax in the price is annoying but is predictable and is consistent. Failing to include the relevant taxes does not impact the relative cost of anything on the shelf. If you choose product A because it's the cheapest, it will still be cheapest once tax is applied. The problem addressed by this bill is when product A is the cheapest on the shelf, but has a secret fee that no other product has, that you don't find out about until checkout.

Legislation that said "you must include the final paid price in any price" in the US literally means "you cannot advertise a price for the product".

To be clear, if you go to an online store, then your rule means none of the listings can include any price information until you provide the final delivery address. Good luck comparing prices.

Hence the law says "your advertised/stated/sticker price must be the full price including any 'fees' and similar that are not set by a government agency".

That is it fixes the only thing that it is possible to fix: prices online including "fees" that are really just part of the price. In addition to being odious and anti-competitive I would also argue that those "fees" are attempted tax evasion to create a fake price for sales, and similar taxes.

Would I like the listed price to be the actual real price being charged? of course, the only people who disagree are also the ones abusing the "fee" BS that this law bans. But any law that attempted to do that by mandating inclusion of taxes in prices would instantly mean that advertisements in the US (I guess technically just CA in this case) would be unable to include any price information.

So is it annoying that when I see prices in advertisements I have to remember to add some % to the price? of course. Is being unable to fix that a reason we should also have to allow retailers to add completely arbitrary and fake "fees" that are a mandatory part of the price that the retailer (or whatever) has complete control over?

I would say the argument is no, we should not allow that, and that's what this law bans.

It sounds like you're saying that because we can't fix the pricing to include taxes everywhere, we shouldn't stop companies from having fake fees?

And that is bullshit. In India every manufacturer is mandated to specify MSRPs that are inclusive of all applicable taxes everywhere. The US can have the same thing too, and remove all complexity altogether so that each item will have a uniform benchmark price against which different stores and retailers can show discounts on.

And by the way, India's taxation is much, much more arbitrary and toxic than US taxation, and has a similar kind of structure with various local taxes piling up on federal taxes. Companies still make it work.