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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

#741

Post by linguae »

munk-a wrote: post #712
Telemakhos wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, implement sales tax like Europe does VAT and include it in on the shelf price, and make sure all shelf prices end in 0 or 5. Then, adding up items in a cart will also end in 0 or 5, and the tax is already included, so there is no math beyond the addition that could change the total to anything ending in something that is not 0 or 5. No matter how people pay, cash or card, the price will be the same, and it will a…

America is allergic to baked in taxes - you've got to keep the appearance of a deal even when there isn't one. America also embraces a lot of junk and hidden fees - ticketmaster is a great example of this. I think consumers would love having baked in taxes and clear prices and were the government functional I'd hope that a consumer advocacy agency could enforce this - but that's simply not where we are right now.

Additionally, having baked-in taxes à la Japan would change how advertising works, since we don't have a uniform sales tax (unlike Japan). For example, I live in San Ramon, CA, which has a sales tax rate of 9.75%. If I drive just two miles north to Danville, the sales tax goes down to 8.75%. If I drive a few miles south to Dublin, the sales tax goes up to 10.25%. The reason is because California has a base statewide sales tax of 7.25% (with 1% of it going to local governments), and city and county governments are free to add up to 4% for local sales taxes.

By comparison, in Japan the consumption tax is 10% for most items (8% for groceries and takeout), and it's the same nationwide.

In addition, there are sometimes fees that are prohibited by law from being baked in. For example, California has a statewide ban on free "single-use" bags in grocery stores and some other businesses. These businesses are required to charge their customers for bags, and they are not allowed to bake it into the price. Some municipalities have extended this to disposable cups as part of an effort to discourage them in favor of reusable cups. For example, Santa Cruz mandates a 25 cent fee on disposable cups. The Costco $1.50 hot dog + drink combo is normally $1.50 + sales tax, but in Santa Cruz it's $1.50 + $.25 mandatory cup fee + sales tax (yes, the cup is taxable). I have yet to see someone bring a disposable cup to Costco or to other places where paper cups are sold, however.

Having baked-in taxes will require big changes about how taxes and fees work in America, the land of extra sales taxes, extra fees, surcharges, and tipping.

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

#742

Post by tomcam »

I am uneasy about it for no logical reason. I have an emotional attachment to pennies because as a not rich kid in the 60s, even finding a penny brightened my day. Back then they sold "penny candy", for example a roll of Smarties, and it was actually a penny. There were maybe half a dozen options. You absolutely could bring a buck in and get hundred pieces of candy, modulo the 6% sales tax in SoCal.

Middle school in the mid 70s: a penny rolls around the corner and I pick it up. A school bully and his friends taunted me at length. They'd launched it hoping I'd do exactly what I did. I just thought to myself, one day I'll be a fucking millionaire and you'll still be a squib. That came true. I am damaged enough to be smug about it to this day.

The next year that same kid and his friends beat me up, giving me a TBI, a permanent hole in my memory, and what apparently was a new personality. Twenty years later he was found dead in a dumpster. When I heard about it I did not weep for him. That is of course my defect. I am not proud of my perpetual grievance.

I saved spare change in jars until my 50s, and every once in a while took them to the bank and bought something cool, or just took them out and played with them with my kids.

So for me pennies are some kind of odd little vestige of control over my life. Completely inane, I get it. They're annoying af and too expensive to manufacture. Everything's electronic anyway these days. I'll miss them though.

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

#743

Post by jjcm »

varenc wrote: post #701
jjcm wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the stores can adjust the prices to match the expected rounding of prices Not necessarily. Anything measured by weight will still be subject to this issue.

Anything measured by weight is already rounding prices to the nearest cent. If something is $1/lb and I have 0.995 lbs of it, I get charged $1.00 not 99.5 cents. Presumably just rounding to the nearest 5 cents isn't that different. Of course we don't expect anyone to be charged fractional cents because our currency doesn't support it. So just changing our smallest currency unit from 1 cent to 5 cents.

> Presumably just rounding to the nearest 5 cents isn't that different

The above context was that rounding to 5 cents might be illegal due to laws regarding SNAP debit prices being different than cash prices.

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

#746

Post by mrguyorama »

mattnewton wrote: post #154
phantom784 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the SNAP law, could they just round down SNAP purchases in the same way to be compliant?

They probably will, but that means a POS software update on a tight deadline.

Or, in reality, most commodity POS systems are actually able to support various countries and tax regimes, and is plenty ready to be configured a variety of ways and work perfectly fine in changing systems.

For example, the exact same physical hardware in American supermarkets for self checkout is also used in countries like Australia that have more coins than the US, and the machines literally do not have enough coin slots for every coin, so they just don't dispense certain coins in that place.

The POS market is rather robust and has been around the block for quite a while and has no problem managing quite literally arbitrary fees. Businesses in our city added a "cost of living" fee to all bills (just raise prices FFS, so dumb) and they didn't have to go out and buy new POS systems, because POS systems are very configurable.

Like, other industries that have been selling software products for decades are actually kind of good at their jobs and it's really just software as a service that reliably makes garbage. POS software can handle all sorts of things you probably don't even realize.

Go lookup all the functionality that Square advertises their POS systems have, and understand that they are new entrants to the market and do not have all the features that legacy vendors have built up over decades. The functionality has been so thoroughly figured out for so long and so straightforward, that a POS you bought in the 90s is likely still fit for service today.

Meanwhile, retailers are actually open to improving and modernizing their POS infrastructure regularly. They added those coupon printers to existing stacks and didn't have to do anything special because POS systems are absolute legends of interoperability. They use extremely standardized ports, including a special supplementary power version of USB, and are very tolerant to mix and match hardware. POS vendors even sell their hardware without forcing you to buy their software. The system is very open.

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

#747

Post by xboxnolifes »

randyrand wrote: post #651

I'm not sure why the article says this is so hard for retailers to figure out. They already round . When they apply 7% sales tax to a $1.99 purchase, what do they charge you? $2.1293? Obviously not. Just do whatever they already do.

The problem is that the rounding you are asking them to do is illegal in a few states.

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

#748

Post by CrazyStat »

jjcm wrote: post #743
varenc wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything measured by weight is already rounding prices to the nearest cent. If something is $1/lb and I have 0.995 lbs of it, I get charged $1.00 not 99.5 cents. Presumably just rounding to the nearest 5 cents isn't that different. Of course we don't expect anyone to be charged fractional cents because our currency doesn't support it. So just changing our smallest currency unit from 1 cent to 5 cents.

> Presumably just rounding to the nearest 5 cents isn't that different The above context was that rounding to 5 cents might be illegal due to laws regarding SNAP debit prices being different than cash prices.

Round it for SNAP debit cards too.

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

#749

Post by quesera »

mrguyorama wrote: post #652
jandrewrogers wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales taxes as they are known in the US were largely introduced in the 20th century. The half-penny was phased out in the mid-19th century. The legal structure of sales taxes in the US present some unique challenges that simply don't exist as problems that needed to be solved in other countries. These problems can't be legislated away because the authority to do so is highly decentralized. Pretending that these probl…

>The legal structure of sales taxes in the US present some unique challenges Nothing about sales tax in the US is unique at all. It is not special. It is not hard. It is not a complex problem. It is basically a lookup, and computerized POS systems have managed it just fine since the dawn of computerized POS systems. In fact, when those sales taxes were first implemented, there was problems relating to how to manage s…

> Meanwhile, 48 state governments

48? Are some states particularly dysfunctional? Or are you excluding commonwealths?

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

#750

Post by munk-a »

linguae wrote: post #741
munk-a wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is allergic to baked in taxes - you've got to keep the appearance of a deal even when there isn't one. America also embraces a lot of junk and hidden fees - ticketmaster is a great example of this. I think consumers would love having baked in taxes and clear prices and were the government functional I'd hope that a consumer advocacy agency could enforce this - but that's simply not where we are right now.

Additionally, having baked-in taxes à la Japan would change how advertising works, since we don't have a uniform sales tax (unlike Japan). For example, I live in San Ramon, CA, which has a sales tax rate of 9.75%. If I drive just two miles north to Danville, the sales tax goes down to 8.75%. If I drive a few miles south to Dublin, the sales tax goes up to 10.25%. The reason is because California has a base statewide…

Some good news though - having baked in sales tax being required in advertising actually aligns marketing lobbying with pushing for harmonized sales taxes which I'd generally consider a more just system. IMO adding random regressive taxes in different counties to make up budget shortfalls causing very strange market effects is a bad thing.
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