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Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

oag.ca.gov

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Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#401

Post by Agingcoder »

seer wrote: post #77
guitarbill wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Bait and switch is one symptom of the issue that the price is not what you'll pay. Which to be clear is awful. And that matters if you have to be careful about spending. Also, "everyone knows about them", really? If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them? See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping. If you give them 5 , and the item…

I really like how tips are done in most of europe, where the tip is included by default in the restaurant price. So now your choices are - add additional tip if you’re really satisfied with your service, or retract the default tip if you’ve been wronged in some way. Just by default you don’t have to think about it, and it shows up in all the places if should - government included.

No there’s no tip in most of Europe. There’s a service charge which can’t be retracted, it’s part of the price.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#402

Post by sgarland »

refurb wrote: post #398
guitarbill wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Bait and switch is one symptom of the issue that the price is not what you'll pay. Which to be clear is awful. And that matters if you have to be careful about spending. Also, "everyone knows about them", really? If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them? See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping. If you give them 5 , and the item…

It’s not that hard. Europeans act like it’s impossible to calculate taxes in your head. If the sales tax is 9.25%, round up to 10%, so $1 on every hundred. I walk into a store and buy something for $7.32. Ok, I know in my head the tax is about $0.70, so cool, it’s be “about” $8. That’s all I need to know. I don’t carry rolls of Pennie’s around so I’m not worried about the cents. He’ll, when was the last time you paid…

You added a decimal - ceil($73.28 * 10%) = $8. I’m sure you knew that and just typed it wrong, but it does speak to how easy it is to make a mistake with simple math, especially for people unlikely to frequent HN.

Case in point, I asked for 1/3 lb of deli meat yesterday at the grocery store, and received 0.41 lbs. Worse, the worker was concerned that they hadn’t given me enough.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#403

Post by devilbunny »

hot_gril wrote: post #285
devilbunny wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a restaurant I've given up on for one of those fees. It's not on their PDF menus at all, nor the HTML ones. Just a nice little surprise when you go there. Fuck you. Pay your employees out of my bill, or go out of business, but don't tell me I owe 4% more for "kitchen support". Much like restaurants that want to charge the customer for credit-card fees. Oh, you want to do that? I'll show you why restaurants we…

The card costs them money to process, so they tack on approximately that amount. And you can opt out by paying cash. Seems fair, though maybe the card price should be default.

Cash costs money to process, too. I want the manager to have to run to the bank several times a day to get fresh change and deposit cash, tearing out their hair from frustration, for imposing such an annoying requirement.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#404

Post by refurb »

tansan wrote: post #254
beachy wrote: post #238

I don't quite see how an overdraft fee (one of the examples given) is a junk fee - it costs the bank real money to cover the loan they are effectively giving you when you are in overdraft.

How about just rejecting the withdrawal instead of overdrafting?

You can set it up that way, I do.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#405

Post by briHass »

wand3r wrote: post #399
prepend wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax rates vary based on the type of good. Give a kid $5 and send them to the grocery store and you have to anticipate if they’ll buy candy or an apple or soap or a magazine. The only advantage to not including taxes is that people spend more money. This is marginally better for stores and worse for everyone else. Theres no genuine benefit to society for not including taxes in the posted price.

I learned, from HN actually, that the reason for this is actually because taxes must be included and enumerated so that the public know the rate and thus can be cognizant of taxes levied against them. Probably goes back to the founding of America being a country that started in large part out of a rebellion against taxes. While at this point it makes more sense to come up with a new law/methodology, I understand the…

All the more reason why everyone should be forced to do quarterly estimated taxes (like 1099 or non W2 workers do) instead of having the amount automatically withheld every paycheck by the payroll system.

Having the money 'in your hand' and then having to write a check for thousands of dollars feels much different. The guillotines would appear quickly.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#406

Post by orangepurple »

seer wrote: post #77
guitarbill wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Bait and switch is one symptom of the issue that the price is not what you'll pay. Which to be clear is awful. And that matters if you have to be careful about spending. Also, "everyone knows about them", really? If it's so easy to "know" the local tax rate for various things, why isn't it easy to label them? See the rest of the world, where even young kids can go shopping. If you give them 5 , and the item…

I really like how tips are done in most of europe, where the tip is included by default in the restaurant price. So now your choices are - add additional tip if you’re really satisfied with your service, or retract the default tip if you’ve been wronged in some way. Just by default you don’t have to think about it, and it shows up in all the places if should - government included.

European culture changes drastically every 100 km. Please be more specific.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#407

Post by briHass »

hot_gril wrote: post #285
devilbunny wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a restaurant I've given up on for one of those fees. It's not on their PDF menus at all, nor the HTML ones. Just a nice little surprise when you go there. Fuck you. Pay your employees out of my bill, or go out of business, but don't tell me I owe 4% more for "kitchen support". Much like restaurants that want to charge the customer for credit-card fees. Oh, you want to do that? I'll show you why restaurants we…

The card costs them money to process, so they tack on approximately that amount. And you can opt out by paying cash. Seems fair, though maybe the card price should be default.

Cash is also preferred in food service, because it's easier to cheat on taxes. When you're paid a tip in cash, with no paper trail of what that amount was, the reported earnings on the tax form is merely a suggestion to tell the truth.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#408

Post by amluto »

heimidal wrote: post #190
autoexec wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't promote transparency. It means you still don't know how much something is going to cost by looking at the listed price of that thing. That's the opposite of transparency. Including taxes and fees in the advertised price won't prevent stores (or anyone else) from making it clear what percentage of that price comes from taxes and government fees. I'd love to see more stores provide an itemized breakdown of t…

It would require a massive overhaul of the tax code in every state, not to mention that it would require state-by-state coordination because Congress cannot force them to comply. Other countries do it because their constitution generally does not include a clause like the Tenth Amendment. But wow, the things it would do to national marketing. Imagine an iPhone launch. Tim Cook gets to the pricing slide and it says, "…

That might be a good thing! If the announcement said that it cost extra in some state, maybe residents of that state would apply more pressure to do something about it.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#409

Post by lazide »

briHass wrote: post #405
wand3r wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned, from HN actually, that the reason for this is actually because taxes must be included and enumerated so that the public know the rate and thus can be cognizant of taxes levied against them. Probably goes back to the founding of America being a country that started in large part out of a rebellion against taxes. While at this point it makes more sense to come up with a new law/methodology, I understand the…

All the more reason why everyone should be forced to do quarterly estimated taxes (like 1099 or non W2 workers do) instead of having the amount automatically withheld every paycheck by the payroll system. Having the money 'in your hand' and then having to write a check for thousands of dollars feels much different. The guillotines would appear quickly.

That’s why it doesn’t happen, obviously. The entire roll out of the first federal income tax in WW2 was designed to be ‘invisible’ to your average American exactly because of the guillotine concern.

And it still widely works - queue all the folks happy about ‘getting their money from the gov’t’ in the form of their tax refund at the end of the year.

Re: Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

#410

Post by ffgjgf1 »

turquoisevar wrote: post #347
devilbunny wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a big corp, they want to advertise nationally. "$1 hamburgers!" or "$799 refrigerator!". You can't make a national ad if you have to have precise pricing. Not the strongest argument, but there it is. A college friend worked at a pizza place that straddled a county line. One county had its own sales tax; the other did not. The register was in the back of the store to take advantage of this (the location of the reg…

> For a big corp, they want to advertise nationally. "$1 hamburgers!" or "$799 refrigerator!". You can't make a national ad if you have to have precise pricing. If we zoom out of the “uniquely American issue” mindset for a second and look at how this is solved elsewhere, then it becomes clear that it doesn’t have to be an issue. In this day and age plenty of multinational corporations advertise a euro price that appl…

> Companies take this into account w/r/t their margins when advertising a euro price that applies to all euro countries.

Or they just recalculate the price based on you shipping info.

It would be rather absurd to expect companies to just “account” for an up to 7% difference in tax rates between different countries.

> TV here in the US many ads are hyper localized

While there are many local channels in some states the tax rate might even differ between counties or towns.

> The real reason the full price including taxes isn’t used is because companies can make it look cheaper without hurting their margins, thus draw in more customers.

Conjecture. Also you’re assuming that most people are incapable of doing basic math.

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