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The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

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

#911

Post by cestith »

1718627440 wrote: post #898
cestith wrote: post #897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go run a local retail business in conflict with state law and regulations. Then tell me how irrelevant those laws are.

The law only says by whom and how the tax is collect, it doesn't specify the tax burden, because it can't, that's only observable and happens due to supply and demand.

The guidance published by the state says explicitly that a business collects the tax from the consumer as an agent of the state, and that the taxes collected belong to the state rather than to the business. If it was a tax on the business, then it could be paid later out of the business’s general funds.

Whether you believe the above or not - and I’m not going to discuss that part further, because this is all easy to find online - the fact remains that most sales taxes must be charged separately from the product price at checkout. There are, as I said, exceptions for bulk goods.

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

#912

Post by 1718627440 »

cestith wrote: post #911
1718627440 wrote: post #898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law only says by whom and how the tax is collect, it doesn't specify the tax burden, because it can't, that's only observable and happens due to supply and demand.

The guidance published by the state says explicitly that a business collects the tax from the consumer as an agent of the state, and that the taxes collected belong to the state rather than to the business. If it was a tax on the business, then it could be paid later out of the business’s general funds. Whether you believe the above or not - and I’m not going to discuss that part further, because this is all easy to…

So what? You can collect taxes how you like, the tax burden still depends on the Elasticity.

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

#913

Post by jrmg »

rando001111 wrote: post #669
jrmg wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A penny is reused over and over again, every time it changes hands. It’s not necessarily bad that it costs a few cents to make one if it has utility. It costs more to make a ceramic mug than it does to fill it with coffee. That doesn’t make a ceramic mug uneconomical, because it’s used lots of times and the cost amortizes. ...Having said that, I don’t think there’s actually much value to having an individual token of…

does it change hands? when was the last time you actually used a penny to buy something? do you ever deposit your pennies into your bank account? most people throw them in a change jar and forget about them.

I agree with you on that - that’s what my last paragraph was trying to convey. I don’t think pennies are necessary, and we are (were) wasting money making them. Nickels and dimes are probably in the same boat.

But I was replying to your reply to a comment which said “I don’t understand why it costing more than face value to mint is such a bad thing” which you antagonistically and derisively called “one of the stupidest comments I have seen on the internet bar none”. It wasn’t a stupid comment.

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

#914

Post by kevincox »

jwrallie wrote: post #847
basscomm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone gets pennies as change but few carry them around let alone spend them It's not just pennies, it's all coins. In a former life I worked in retail and almost nobody would fish around in their pockets for exact (or even near) change. They'd always hand me bills for their purchase even if they had just completed a transaction and had the coins in their pocket . That was in the 90's, and I still see it happenin…

People are very lazy to do basic math. I always minimize the coins I am carrying by doing math on my head so that the combined value of a certain coin never exceeds the amount of the next available coin/bill, that way I never exceed the carrying capacity of my wallet. Most people I know just pocket everything and put on a box at home for undetermined time.

It's not even just that. Coins are heavy, large and noisy. Bills are way more convenient and cards even more so. If we could solve privacy issues with cards I would say get rid of all bills. Maybe just keep a few $100s in my wallet in case my cards get declined for some reason.

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

#915

Post by kevincox »

whimsicalism wrote: post #382
axiolite wrote: post #373

penny-rounding “imposes a tax of $3.27 million Canadian dollars from consumers to grocery stores on a yearly basis in aggregate https://economics.ubc.ca/news/penny-rounding-profitable-for-... eliminating the penny would require producing more nickels to “fill the gap in small-value transactions.” But nickels suffer from a similar “seigniorage” problem: the 2024 U.S. Mint report said the five-cent coins have a unit co…

i think ~5 cents per capita is a fine price to pay to never have to think about pennies again

Especially since the lower cost means that we would save more than that 5 cents in taxes. (Well money is fungible so not really, but that money would be spent for some other government service.)

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

#916

Post by arantius »

randomtoast wrote: post #866
chiph wrote: post #216

Like many people, I throw my change into a jar when I get home. One time I only kept pennies and used an old apple cider jug. Turns out that a gallon of pennies is worth almost $55 [0]. And that carrying a heavy glass jug filled with pennies to the Coinstar machine is very anxiety inducing. Speaking of which - the Coinstar machines near me will give you several options for redemption. Some of which have been Amazon a…

You probably could have made $150 if you had melted the coins and sold the copper instead.

A penny is less than 3% copper (since 1982).

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

#917

Post by nayuki »

benchly wrote: post #876
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…

I've thought on this as someone who travels between the US and Canada a lot, and the scene about the embezzlement scheme from Office Space often comes to mind (the "Pennies for everyone" tray: https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ea64c5fd-3c6d-46f9-b729-beef7b0... ) For me, it's not about the pennies I'm losing. You're right, I don't care about them and the end of their minting doesn't mean much to me at all. No, it's about…

> box of instant noodles for $0.99 USD

If you as a consumer care about rounding, then just buy three of them: 3× $0.99 = $2.97, which rounds down to $2.95 USD, netting you a $0.02 bonus (the maximum possible).

The rounding is done at the end of the transaction, not per item. I speak from experience in Canada - it is indeed possible to execute this transaction in real life. And basic food items have no sales tax, so the price you see on the shelf is the price that you pay at checkout. It is 100% realistic to go into a food store, grab 3 items at $0.99 CAD each, and pay $2.95 CAD in cash.

Because you as a consumer has control over the transaction, I find any arguments against rounding to be ridiculous.

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

#918

Post by dragonwriter »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #543
dpark wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretending that these problems don't exist because they don't exist elsewhere is not helpful. Pretend that’s everything in the US is globally unique to us also is not helpful. “No one else has sales tax like us” is likely not true but also not super relevant. Tax collecting agencies in 50 states and however many territories could issue guidance tomorrow for how to deal with this and it would have the force of law u…

The tax authorities cannot unilaterally change the law with "guidance". It is explicitly written into statute in many cases, requiring legislative action across thousands of independent tax authorities. Complicating it more is that in some cases a change must satisfy constitutional requirements which are even harder to change. Everything is easy if you pretend that you can change things by authoritarian fiat instead…

> The tax authorities cannot unilaterally change the law with "guidance".

Because the law generally allows but does not mandate enforcement against every violation, and because guidance provided by enforcement authorities can be used as a defense in enforcement actions, so long as the guidance provides what is in effect a structured exception to the law, but does not forbid anything not forbidden by the law, yes, they pretty much can in practice, even without explicit authority. And it is actually very common when external facts (including federal law) change faster than state/local process can keep up for enforcement agencies to use discretionary forbearance framed around specific guidance as a band-aid until adaptation of the underlying rules is in place.

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

#919

Post by dragonwriter »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #843
mrguyorama wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Somehow, in all of this, you didn't address any relevant point. Some sales taxes are conditional at the point-of-sale, there is no single tax-included price. The US has never retired coinage in the sales tax era, an assumption built into many tax codes. There is no central authority for sales tax or price display nor standardized rules. The rules of multiple authorities apply to single jurisdictions. Changing the sal…

> The rules of multiple authorities apply to single jurisdictions.

There is no federal sales tax rule, so there is at most one soveriegn authority whose rules apply to any jurisdiction as to computation and collection of sales tax, any other authority is a dependent one, whose policies can be (and probably are already) constrained by the sovereign's own rules governing sales tax, which can be the level at which solutions are imposed, if necessary. "Thousands of independent authorities" is not a reality.

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

#920

Post by drdec »

mattnewton wrote: post #821
drdec wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same way with the penny. Tax on a 0.99 item isn't coming out to an exact penny multiple. So stores are already dealing with this situation

Yes, stores are dealing with this alongside a whole legal framework today. They would not have the benefit of that for any changes without pennies, and in a few cases may open themselves to legal liability by underpaying state sales tax, overcharging snap recipients, etc etc. We don’t know because this was just a tweet decree by the executive while the legislature has been paralyzed.

You have missed the point.

The situation where pennies exist already has all the problems concerning rounding after sales tax. Things are rounded to whole pennies. The same solutions can be applied to round things to whole nickels.

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