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Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law

oag.ca.gov

431–440 of 480 posts

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

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Washington State, Gov Inslee imposed the equivalent of a $.50 per gallon tax on the oil companies. The oil companies raised the WA gas prices by $.50 per gallon. Inslee blamed the price rise on the greedy oil companies. The taxes should be a separate line item on all purchases, so people can see what the taxes are.

Sure but while we're at it, let's also break out things like wholesale costs, manufacturing marginal unit cost, per-unit profits, etc. Shed some light on what every layer is getting rather than being distracted by focusing on only a single one. And of course none of this is incompatible with still printing one big-print all-inclusive price.

People vote on taxes.

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

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the only practical alternative I can imagine would mean to never show a price... yes, the current state of things is more beneficial to the consumer. Again, seeing an pre-tax MSRP price in an ad is better than not having any MSRP in an ad at all. If you have a practical alternative that could somehow allow for advertising with prices that include tax, I'd love to hear it. (Just to make sure we're on the same pa…

Localized advertising is the obvious answer.

“Local” advertising is not practical. There are 13,000 sales tax jurisdictions in the US.

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

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is certainly true is that Americans are culturally more friendly toward strangers. Americans smiling and talking a lot is a cliche at this point. However, I would bet the "best friend" experiences that you have had would be nothing but simple pleasantries to a typical American. Tipping culture has little to do with it; "friendliness" is regarded as an element of excellent service here. Even in situations where n…

No, as an American expat, I find American tipping culture distasteful in the extreme, as well as Americans' countless justifications for it (and also their justifications for the horrible bathrooms). America is also the only place I've eaten where the server continually interrupts my conversation just to ask "how's that tasting for you?". Everywhere else, servers know not to interrupt people unless they have a good r…

My experiences outside the US do not match yours, I guess.

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

#434
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn’t “cost extra”, it has a different tax structure. Sure, there might be no sales tax in OR, but there sure is income tax. Just north in WA, it’s the opposite where there is sales tax but no income tax.

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

#435
post #14

> Hidden fees are fees in which a seller uses an artificially low headline price to attract a customer and usually either discloses additional required fees in smaller print, or reveals additional unavoidable charges later in the buying process. Like tips?

Would you call a tip unavoidable?

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

#436
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone knows Displayed prices should be the price you have to pay - full stop. No math required or knowledge of local municipal/state/federal tax structures, no required knowledge of local cultural expectations around tipping. Just pay the price. Just because you're accustomed to tax/tip additions doesn't mean they are in any way a good thing that should be preserved.

Do I get a breakdown of what went into each item's price on the display sticker? Because we get that now on most (if not all) grocery stores and retailers. I can see what items in my grocery receipt were charged which of the various local taxes and can dispute them. I've had groceries miss-categorized and considered prepared food which carries a local tax in my area, but they were not prepared foods and should not ha…

You sure can have that. Why not, its just some extra lines printed out on the receipt. No one, certainly not I, are asking to do away with itemized receipts.

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

#437
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about just rejecting the withdrawal instead of overdrafting?

At Tangerine in Canada, it was both— they denied the transaction and hit me with a fee.

A fee for doing nothing? That is illegal.

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

#438
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price on labels in a store is an absolutely negligible part of the problem. By the time you're looking at prices in the store you've already chosen that store, presumably on the basis of the advertisements. 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 incl…

> Hence the law says "your advertised/stated/sticker price must be the full price less taxes". 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…

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_India, India has a fixed set of GST rates and classes. It does not look like each city can have its own additional GST. The only "local" tax I can find is property taxes, and the US has those too. But we're talking about property tax, we're not talking about interstate taxes (which are illegal under the US constitution), we're talking about what you or I (I'm originally from NZ) would call GST, or the UK would call VAT (the UK adds so much value :D).

The whole point is that there is no set sales tax that is present everywhere.

I will try to make this clear, step by step.

In the US, the federal government does not, and can not, set any kind of federal sales tax, service tax, or similar.

Every state is free to set its own sales and service taxes. The states have set sales taxes from 0% to 7.25%.

In each state, each county can also set their own additional sales taxes.

In each county, each city can also set their own additional sales taxes.

So that total combined tax for any given location in the US can range from 0% (in four states) to 13.5%.

That 13.5% number? That's in Alabama where the state sales tax is only 4% and the average sales tax (state + county + city) is less than 9%. That's just one state.

The 7.25% sales is California, where total sales tax varies from 7.25% to 10.5% (the 10.5% is only in one city).

For a product in the US to include an MSRP that included all taxes it would have to include hundreds, if not thousands, of prices and the cities, counties, or zip codes that those apply to.

This is before you get to those taxes changing regularly.

When we are talking about the insane numbers of tax rates in the US here, we are talking about GST.

When we talk about cities that set their own tax rate, this isn't some population driven thing, its a specific legal entity.

To try and reinforce this, let's consider just the San Francisco Bay Area in California. In this region there are 101 municipalities, each of which can have their own additional sales tax rates, on top of the sales tax rates from nine counties. The population of these municipalities range from 1500 people to a bit over 1 million. For the bulk of these there is literally no space between the cities. Take my house, it's in Oakland, but if I walk past one house on the corner, and then about 10 houses west the houses are no longer in Oakland, they're in Emeryville, which can have it's own sales tax.

Just in my commute to/from work I drive through I think 10 different sales tax rates. This is ignoring any special sales tax rates: some but not all cities have different tax rates for soda, cigarettes, etc.

And understand this cannot be changed, any law that tried to change this would fall to the CA constitution (which limits state government control of local governments), and any thing that tried to remove this control from the states fails due to the US bill of rights (the part of the constitution that also guarantees freedom of religion, guns (sigh), etc). This restriction on the control higher level government has on lower level/state/local governments is fundamental to the construction of US government.

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

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is certainly true is that Americans are culturally more friendly toward strangers. Americans smiling and talking a lot is a cliche at this point. However, I would bet the "best friend" experiences that you have had would be nothing but simple pleasantries to a typical American. Tipping culture has little to do with it; "friendliness" is regarded as an element of excellent service here. Even in situations where n…

No, as an American expat, I find American tipping culture distasteful in the extreme, as well as Americans' countless justifications for it (and also their justifications for the horrible bathrooms). America is also the only place I've eaten where the server continually interrupts my conversation just to ask "how's that tasting for you?". Everywhere else, servers know not to interrupt people unless they have a good r…

Thing I love about tipping is I know the money is going to workers not the owner. Probably the difference between me and you is I like and respect service workers. So I like tipping them.

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

#440
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hence the law says "your advertised/stated/sticker price must be the full price less taxes". 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…

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_India , India has a fixed set of GST rates and classes. It does not look like each city can have its own additional GST. The only "local" tax I can find is property taxes, and the US has those too. But we're talking about property tax, we're not talking about interstate taxes (which are illegal under the US constitution), we're talking about what you or I (I'm orig…

OK.. seems I was under a major misconception about how US taxation operates, I naively assumed it was similar to other countries' federal+state structures.

Thanks for your detailed reply!

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