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this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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The US doesn't have a VAT, but a sales tax on final sale of a good. Not only that, but states, counties, and cities can issue their own sales tax on sales within their borders. There are also cases where sales tax isn't charged at the register. In the end, it is easier for companies to just charge the tax at the end, so they do.
There are these mystical things called computers, that are very good at computing things. So when printing the price you can automatically compute it into the labels.
Nowadays, yes. However, that wasn't always the case. People got used to tax not being included and there has never been a big push to change that.
So instead of calculating the price once and putting it on the sign, they calculate it every time a customer shows up at the register. Sure sounds way easier.
Or they print out consistent signs across a region, advertise to it, and take care of the sales tax to handle it.
Again, they calculated the price at the checkout, so they could also have done it for the price tag. It is not a valid excuse in the slightest. Its only purpose is to obfuscate the actual price of an item and confuse the customer about the actual price of an item.
And what is I'm tax exempt? Now the price isn't right for me...
That is a nonsensical excuse. If they can calculate the price at the checkout then they can calculate it when they are putting up the price tags.
Many cities and counties often put a SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Tax) on the ballot. Usually for roads or schools, usually voted for, usually a penny. They are for a limited time, then they may expire or be put on the ballot again. If they expire, then every price tag for every item, in every store is now wrong. And if both city and county expire at different times, you could get a nightmare of changes.
Easier to change the software at checkout for the changes rather than every price tag.
It's not that it's easier it's that it allows the companies to gouge you. If the store said the bottle of coke was 2.15 instead of 1.99 you might realize that it's not a good price for acidic sugar water and pick something else. Like the free water out of the faucet. This also means public water would be higher quality because people would actually use it and demand cleaner water.