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As a European I’ll never cease to find it mind blowing that it is normal for a Americans that the cost to them of damn near everything is more than the cost initially shown to them.
You’re completely right to feel that way. As an American, it’s mind blowing to me, too. I really don’t like the fact that “hidden fees” have become normal.
Traveling in the US it can often feel like everyone wants to scam you or take advantage of you if you don’t pay attention.
Heck, even store prices and restaurant prices aren’t the real price.
Store prices are without sales tax/VAT, and restaurants wants you to tip 20% so they can keep not paying their “employees”.
The tax drives me crazy. The excuse for not displaying the total price after tax is because it’s different for each state. …yet the cash register seems to be able to handle that perfectly fine. So it can’t that hard to figure it out.
Edit: after a quick look into it, the main problem is tax in a lot of places is based on the Total amount sold, not on each item. So that could definitely be impossible to display before hand.
after a quick look into it, the main problem is tax in a lot of places is based on the Total amount sold, not on each item.
I’m actually confused, aren’t taxes a percentage? The sum of a percentage of all items should be the same as a percentage of the sum, no? Or is my brain not do math good? Can someone smarter than me explain?
The sum of a percentage of all items should be the same as a percentage of the sum, no?
Suppose you buy two items costing
xandy, and there’s a constant sales tax oft(say 10%, or 0.1). You’d payt * x + t * y, ort * (x + y). You can even generalize this toΣ(t * x) = t * Σx(forx ∈ X, whereXis the set of prices you’re paying).In other words, yes.
In case you want the math name for this property, it’s the distributive property.
I think the issue they were bringing up though is that tax is not applied equally to all items, and that tax may be determined by number of items sold. I don’t actually know if this is true or not, but if it is, the distributive property doesn’t apply anymore.Edit: I re-read the comment, that doesn’t look like what they were saying actually. Either way, if tax is weird like this, distributive property may not apply anymore.Hopefully someone can. Me no math good either.
[email protected] shared this:https://www.taxjar.com/blog/retail/can-retailer-include-sales-tax-in-the-price
Say you list a table lamp on your website at $100, tax included. Well, if you sell that table lamp to a buyer in Connecticut (where the tax rate is a flat 6.35%) then you’re required to remit $6.35 in sales tax to the state of Connecticut on that transaction.
But if you sell the same table lamp to a buyer in Aberdeen, Washington, where the sales tax rate is 9.08%, then you’d be required to remit $9.08 in sales tax to the state of Washington.
As you can see, you are cutting into your profit margin by including tax in your pricing.
Further, US customers are accustomed to paying their local sales tax rates. We’re so accustomed to paying odd amounts in sales tax that paying a flat rate might surprise us or leave us a little confused.
This is anti-consumer bullshit nonsense. All they did was hid their only real “con” behind a wall of text. “As you can see, you are cutting into your profit margin by including sales tax”
And the last paragraph is fucking stupid too. People are too used to seeing numbers, so other numbers will confuse them!
Last paragraph feels like marketing language for “it’s free real estate”
100% agree
I’m not aware of anywhere in the US where the tax is variable depending on total amount sold. Sometimes some things are excluded from sales tax. But that’s per-item and not variable.
In the vast majority of the US there’s no reason they can’t just display the price with tax.
Granted, prices on consumer items are so fucking out of control retailers and etc just charge whatever the fuck they want and people are expected to pay it. They’re gouging at 80%, 100%, 150% markups on food, clothing, services, etc versus 2 years ago and people seem to just accept it (tough not to when everyone is doing it)
Initially they got away with it because “COVID supply problems”, which was frequently a lie or exaggeration. Now there’s no excuse given typically; people quote “inflation” but that’s a tiny fraction of it. It’s just gouging companies have learned they can keep getting away with more and more.
Check out the article linked below. I’m interested in what you think after that. Especially with the states that forbid including tax in displayed prices (and why they don’t).
I didn’t know about that until I just read it.
In Ontario Canada there is no provincial tax component on meals costing less than $4. This dates from the time you could get a simple lunch for < $4. Unfortunately it’s never been adjusted for inflation.
No reason not to show amount with tax and give people a pleasant surprise though
When I make price signs at work I make sure the price shows taxes and bottle deposits. I think my store is the only one to do that. I manage a liquor store
You’re a hero. I hope your customers notice what your doing for them.
Tax in almost every single place I’ve ever been to in the United States is not nearly so complicated. State tax, occasional city/county tax, seldom restaurant tax are nearly always flat rates. It wouldn’t be difficult to incorporate those taxes applied for each individual item to their prices at all. Most places choose not to because it inflates the price on menus and price tags, and most people assume tax is not included in these prices.
The initial shock of charging more could convince patrons to go elsewhere if it’s not perfectly clear tax is included in the price.
The problem is at the advertising level.
Could your local Safeway put tax-inclusive prices in the circular? Sure, although there are actually laws that prohibit such local pricing (YMMV; I’ve lived in a lot of states) specifically so that people in the sticks aren’t shouldering the entire transportation bill to their IGA. This is why grocery circulars are regional, but that’s an aside. Still, different cities in the region will have different tax rates, so they can’t do tax-inclusive, and they certainly can’t have a different price on the shelf than in the circular, and here we are.
But these are small potatoes.
Now, can Tim Cook release a new iPhone and list the price in every municipality in the U.S. in the keynote? The patchwork of devolved taxing authority makes the U.S. a poor candidate for tax-inclusive pricing.
States universally abandoning income tax for VAT (ain’t never gonna happen, since VAT inconveniently hits even billionaires’ consumption [and even less likely would be pushing through VAT while retaining income tax]) could get things closer to what Europeans have come to expect, where each state would have a universal rate and consistently applied carveouts and then distribute that to lower tiers of government as some states currently do with sales tax, but the closest advertising could get to that would be “state VAT excluded,” at which point nothing has been fixed in terms of walking out the door paying the advertised price at the cost of unpopular economic upheaval.
And that’s why I am a misanthrope… hard to love humanity when they’re penalized for not being out to get you
That’s still my favorite EU legislation. The price that is displayed must be equal (or higher, discounts are still allowed) to the price that you pay. Taxes, tips, fees, everything must be included in the price.
I get the “but different states sales taxes thing”, for national advert. However even then, just make them present example price
Get the new Moborola Bazer, only 549 dollars*
* price example for Buffalo new York, including taxes and feesSince if one is going with “well the final price you pay might not be what was advertised”, make it be more representative and real. Yeah the final price might be different sometimes even lower depending on your local taxes compared to the example prices calculation locations taxes.
Local advertising or on the shelf prices? There is no excuse, you are selling in that location. You know what the taxes and fees are just add them in. Any rare special discount and discrepancy cases, well the people eligible for those know to expect the difference.
Some things we have to buy without know the cost, hospital/doctor fees, insurance can surprise you, etc.
It’s why the “Oh the Free Market will sort itself out” is such a bullshit claim.
My five year old who just got shot at the fifth school shooting this month is just gonna have to buckle down and be patient while I compare quality of service and cost of… the one hospital in town and… that one in the next county ever.
/s
It’s funny because I’ve literally never seen a single person genuinely make that claim. Just people being mad about theoretical people making that claim. I’m sure they exist, they must with how many people claim to know someone that said it, but that line of logic doesn’t seem to be as common as people make it seem.
I have run into many people making that claim.
Online, offline, politicians, etc.
And on the free market isnt sorting itself out - the claim is usually that the gubment is still not letting the market be free enough. That’s usually the claim, for example, from all the right-wingers I know for when they get cornered on why health care costs are 1000% ridiculous.
It’s like the national anthem. It’s drilled into our heads since birth, but no one actually knows it.
I mean, if you perform it enough times, you tend to retain it. But then, I have some Carmina Burana and Palestrina memorized for the same reason.
9 years I had to sing it. I don’t remember it past The first two lines. But I like to block things like that out in my head.
Republicans: “Free market!” Also republicans: “Buy American” “we need to ban Chinese companies from importing and selling goods in the u.s.” “Outsourcing labor is just smart business”
It’s government mandated. We have variable sales taxes on every product. And it isn’t included in the ‘price’.
Stores can show out the door pricing of most products, they just won’t. It’s fairly common in the cannabis space because they don’t want to make change.
Depends on the state.
https://www.taxjar.com/blog/retail/can-retailer-include-sales-tax-in-the-price
Nice!
Variable taxes based on region. The rates don’t change within a single store, which is where all of the labels are printed. Just print the label with the tax added.
Right. Same excuse as the cable companies. They can clearly calculate the price easily when you get the bill. They can just as easily calculate it when showing you how much it costs.
That or they can just eat the very minor cost difference in each region
No it isn’t. But companies are certainly trying to make it so.
It’s actually only a few things. The vast majority of the goods we purchase are clearly priced. Most states (and some local jurisdictions like big cities) do have sales tax applied to purchases of non-essential goods, but those rates are generally much lower than the national sales taxes in most European countries.
Sales tax is the most obvious example of adding to the cost I’ve been shown, but it’s everything. Here if there is a price on something that is the price you pay. Period.
If I have €5 and the price on the shelf is €4.90 we are all good, and I don’t even need to know what country I’m in!But is is more than that, if I take my car in to be fixed, they have to agree every cost they want to charge me in advance at no point can anything cost me more than I expected and agreed to up front.
Airline tickets, theatre tickets, hospital bills, TV ads, you name it, the price they state or advertise is what I pay, no ifs-no buts.Bragging <.< Trying to make us all jelly.
Or jam, or marmite, or whatever bread-spread-stuff.
I think they spread tea on crumpets or something
Last I heard it was beans on tea. Or was it bread on beans, I can’t remember.
Idk. But I think if you say crumpets three times fast they break away from your continent.
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I wish.
I’m seeing it more and more. Little “processing fees” here and there, some tied to COVID, some tied to credit cards. There needs to be a clap-back against this behavior.
The number of places trying to suddenly add or expect an 18% tip or something infuriates me.
Like, why the fuck are you making me suddenly opt out of an 18% tip, Subway? What the fuck would that be for? And after your prices have gone up like 50% in 3 years already??
And I’m sure a bunch of morons pay it, which is why more and more places are pushing it.
How about a “convenience fee” for making an online payment. Why should I pay a fee to make the transaction more convenient for the company who no longer has to pay an employee to take the payment in person?
It’s actually almost everything unless you live in one of the 4 States without sales tax.
Which, in the case of Oregon, means income tax rivaling federal, and you’re paying that on rent. The money always comes from somewhere, and I despised it far more than I worried about coming up with $1.07 for a 99-cent burger.
Yeah, I don’t have a problem with sales tax either (on non essential goods). I do have a problem with it not being included in the price shown on the product.
It’s not about having a sales tax applied to some or all goods or about how much that’d be. It’s about not listing the final price including the tax right until you’re supposed to pay for it. How dumb is that?
I love oregon, no sales tax so the listed price is the price. Now all these idiots moved here and are making changes as to why this place was nice. Like trying to implement a sales tax and getting rid of the urban growth boundary
Now we have to pump our own gas, it was nice having someone do it for ya… if they add a sales tax and create urban sprawl like LA or Phoenix I’ll loose my mind…
Just responded above about the downside of all income being taxed at far higher rates than sales tax. That said, my god the amount of ink we spilled on the Ashland UGB.
That’s why you live in Vancouver and shop in Portland! No income tax or sales tax!
My college roommate was from Washougal. He taught me the even finer art of retaining all deposit items in Seattle for my next visit, at which time I’d pop over the 5 bridge first and then show up with an empty car.
This is why the ISPs don’t want to do it. The FCC told them:
Providers are free, of course, to not pass these fees through to consumers to differentiate their pricing and simplify their Label display if they believe it will make their service more attractive to consumers and ensure that consumers are not surprised by unexpected charges.
The ISPs refuse to eat the costs of doing business. They know people will shit when they see all the fees that customers do not need to pay are being charged to them.
There will be lawsuits when the fees are listed.
It’s not really about eating the costs of doing business. A restaurant doesn’t charge you $1 at the end of your bill for washing your fork, it’s just part of the cost of serving the dish and so your Salmon Rice dish is $18 not $17.
The point is that the listed prices for services should either have these fees be built right into the price…as pretty much all businesses do…or if you’re going to put it at the end of the bill then it needs to be clearly defined per FCC.
It’s a transparency problem. Not only is your $60 cell phone bill not actually $60 but then they also don’t tell you about the additional fees very well when they tack them on at the end. It’s gotta be one or the other, not neither.
Restaurants also don’t have a line item on their bill to make you pay for their anti-unionization efforts. ISPs, on the other hand, do often have a “regulatory recovery fee,” the purpose of which is to pay their lobbyists to fight regulators so they can continue to screw you.
An increasing number of restaurants are pulling exactly this sort of bullshit–little 3.5% fees at the bottom of the total check disclosed only in fine print on the menu (if at all) tied to COVID, paying their staff, processing credit cards, etc. It needs to end. Pricing should be upfront so customers can compare what they’re actually paying, not snuck in at the end.
Why does everyone try to prove everyone else wrong? That entire first paragraph is completely unnecessary. You can simply add to a discussion without being "well actually " about some detail you want to nitpick. The other two paragraphs are spot on.
Because it’s a meaningful distinction. The issue isn’t them passing the cost to their customers. It’s them lying about their prices instead of telling you what they’re going to charge you.
They government is charging them those fees. And the government has said that they do not need to pass those fees onto the customer.
In order to operate they must pay those fees. They do not need to charge the customer those fees. But they do anyways.
Thus, they are passing the cost of doing business onto the customer.
Read the quoted text.
Is it the only issue? No. It is part of the issue. And the FCC called them out on it.
They will literally always pass all of their costs of doing business to their customers. That’s what businesses are and it is impossible to function any other way.
It is not in any way part of the issue. There is exactly one issue here. It’s adding these fees on top of the price you advertised to the customer with absolutely zero way for the customer to find out the actual price they’ll be charged. That’s the only thing the FCC cares about here and the entire issue. Anything else is a lie and a misdirection.
Ok yeah I can see that. Thank you for breaking it down like that.
Not trying to prove you or anyone else wrong… that’s a really odd and unnecessarily defensive take.
It’s just a discussion.
It’s really one of the worst things brought over from reddit
I like to imagine people doing that in an every day conversation. It’s ridiculous. No one would ever talk to them lol
Seems like a friendly enough response was given to your comment and you automatically assumed they were only interested in saying you’re wrong.
Having a discussion is not “proving everyone wrong”
Especially when they were wrong. They’re obviously going to pass along any actual cost they have one way or another.
That’s not what’s shady or what’s being addressed. It’s the $60 ***(plus $100 in unlisted fees we literally won’t even let our support provide or estimate on signup) to lie about prices that’s the problem.
I recommend reading either the quoted text, or the article. Preferably both.
That was my point, thanks.
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Um, do you only have conversations with people who agree with you?
People in real life don’t nitpick every word you say.
No, that’s fair. But also, when you’re conversing in “real life”, people probably aren’t paying that much attention to every word you say and don’t care enough to “nitpick”.
I think it’s worse here on Lemmy tbh
Edit: wait fuck did I just do it by accident?
Difficulty doesn’t make sense, because if they can charge you for it, then they can list it out on your bill.
Unless it’s a “we need to show profit growth to our shareholders” fee.
Exactly.
Aww it’s too hard… well make it simpler by not charging shitty little fees.
That’s what makes it hard. If they tell you how much bullshit they add on, you wouldn’t pay.
Lol as if people have a choice and there isn’t a monopoly on ISP coverage
If latency isn’t a top-tier issue, a 5G hotspot is a viable alternative in good coverage areas. I switched from Charter to T-Mobile by selling myself as a sole proprietor seeking a business account. Immediate $35/month savings to $50 for unlimited (I used 150GB in my first month without hearing a peep) and ready to go into my van in a few weeks. Speeds are generally 250-300Mbit, dropping to 80Mbit during brief congested periods.
Oh, and no bullshit fees. It’s actually $50 on the nose.
I’ve heard that there’s a hidden monthly data cap, and you get throttled real hard if you reach it, but now that it’s “unlimited” they aren’t telling you what it is.
On T-Mobile? If you get the top tier unlimited plan, it is specifically the one with no limits or slowdowns. All the other tiers give you unlimited usage, but explicitly state what the limit before slowdown is. I have the unlimited one and have used at most 2TB in a month without any slow down. My dad only gets like 15GB (or whatever the lowest tier is) for the month before it goes slow as fuck.
I used 800 GB on mine when I had it, so it’s more than that
True. Perhaps “people will be more emboldened to break up their monopoly” would be better.
If it’s too hard to list them, it must be even harder to charge and bill them.
It is, that’s why they probably overcharge you. They figure better to charge you for things and let you figure it out.
My ISP has no problem breaking out the fees.
And… I am indeed, in the US.
So, not seeing the issue here.
It’s not actually about listing the fees. They’re worried that if they have to list the fees, customers will realize they’re paying 19.99 a month to rent a router, or are getting charged for a land line they didn’t ask for.
And get a discount for letting the cable company claim they have cable TV to scam money from ESPN.
Could you explain this more?
ESPN is probably paying cable companies to air their shows over their cables to customers with a subscription to ESPN.
Yea… Comcast is really bad about that. When I had them a decade back, I made sure to being my own hardware.
Americans pay extra for the ability to call emergency line 911!?
911 and similar emergency numbers always cost money.
In many places individuals pays for it through taxes, but people may not realize it because there’s 1 tax and 1 big budget that pays for many different public services.
In the US I guess the cost is separated from other public services, and paid through ISP via a fee.
I’m just here wondering who out there wouldn’t want to be able to call the emergency line.
It shouldn’t be a separate fee, but rather incorporated into the tax that pays for all the emergency services anyway.
It’s a tax. You can’t refuse to pay it, it’s just itemized out like that. Only way to avoid paying it is to not pay for a phone.
It is a regressive tax which is bad (everyone who has a phone line pays the same instead of taxing the rich more) but there are bigger worries in America.
You do too. It just might not be reflected on your phone bill, and is just lumped in with your normal taxes / VAT/etc…
You’re paying $130 a month for your internet?? Where in the price gouging place do you live?
130 for 500gb fiber is an awesome deal in the US.
I used to pay $120/mo for business class 50mb asymmetrical coaxial with like 10 up. Had to get business class when Comcast started introducing data caps on the residential tier.
Now my ISP is bundled with my rent, so what I’m actually paying is totally opaque. No idea how much of my rent goes to Comcast. Oh, and it’s not optional. I can’t even get other service here because Comcast has a partnership with the building owners.
Telcos are fucked here.
Trust me. This is CHEAP compared to what I had a decade ago.
One Decade ago, I paid 95$ a month for “15 mbit” ADSL. Which- topped out around 8Mbit/s on a GOOD day. (Rain/moisture wrecked hell on the lines around here.)
Here’s a wild idea, simplify your pricing. Anyways, it’s cool to see the FCC stand for the citizens every now and then.
If they can charge for something then they can adequately explain what the thing is they’re charging for
Wasn’t too much effort to add them to the bills of millions of people…
Okay everybody - this is one of those good things that the Biden Administration and Democrats are doing to properly run government.
It is also something that most people will not know about. Why? Because it’s not a simple sound bite.
So my homework to all of us is to make sure our friends and Neighbors who are complaining about government not doing anything for us to point this and similar things out to them.
Real benefits, real work is almost never easily described in sound bites. So many people believe the Democrats don’t do what they say they’re going to do because getting s*** done is too complicated for most people.
Is this really the Biden Administration and the Democrats?
I think I have read it a few years ago that the FCC has a new head, who is actually there to fix things. I don’t remember where I read it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an EFF article or a Louis Rossmann video.
Yes. The FCC is part of the Executive branch, which is lead by the President, who appoints the leadership of the institutions that carry out the executive branch’s assigned job: enforce and execute the law.
So we finally got rid of Ajat eh?
Do we say “fuck a shit pie” anymore?
Was trying to hide that I didn’t know how to spell his last name
One of those weird, rare situations where Google seems to do something right. They said the cost was $100, and every month I pay $100. I’m assuming fees are built into that, but my bill never deviates from the price I was told, which is really all I care about.
Google is an ISP now?
Google has run a fiber ISP for a little over 10 years now. It was one of the first U.S. ISPs to offer gigabit speeds to residential customers, and has provided steady competitive pressure to other providers to provide faster speeds in those markets, as well.
Google also operates a mobile service called Google Fi as an MVNO. They handle the billing, but lease the capacity the way other MVNOs do.
Wtf is happening in the US? Here I get an advertised monthly price for my subscription, I set up a direct deposit for that exact amount, when I buy it, then forget about it.
Maybe there is a commencement fee one time for the equipment they give me or work they do, but that’s all.
How is it legal to advertise and agree on a price, then send random bills?
The companies make the rules since bribery is legal (see lobbying). They set whatever price they want, then use the money to buy the politicians that continue to create stronger pro-corporation laws continuing the lack of choice and change.
Yeah mine is fine in Canada the price is the price per month till a renewal (biyearly). And if you call them they can breakdown bundled price into what each service costs (for business tax expenses)
Comcast is sad that it can’t fuck us in hidden fees anymore. I feel terrible…just terrible for them.
If you can’t list em, you shouldn’t be able to charge for em
Paying every fee is even harder.
So let’s stop doing that as well.
