Prices tags are normally prepared using computers which are famously good at maths. Here in the UK, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have different rules for tax on certain products and yet everything is advertised with the final price.
TV ads usually don’t mention pricing for national brands. Local ads like circulars are generally for just one store anyway. All of this would be low effort to do. The only reason they don’t is it tricks people into spending more than they want.
Prices are printed on packaging for many things too, books, magazines, bags of potatoe chips.
So then stores would have to cover the manufacturer price with a higher one just in their store. Which is a waste of time and material if you can just condition a population to ignore the price jump at the register.
None of these a reasons the store, which posts it’s own prices and barcodes, can’t just include the total on the tag, or better yet set the price to the nearest whole number (or division of .10/.25) and take the tax out of that full amount. I know because I live in the midwest, I worked in retail/grocery store and our store piloted a test program of doing exactly that. Customers were incredibly happy and our overall sales actual went up because people who didn’t normally shop with us started to because it was easier to budget.
We got shut down by corporate beancounters who were freaking out because we were supposedly making less money. Except our sales and profits were up for the 8 weeks we demo’d the program and 4 weeks after we were forced to stop sales dropped below our year-on-year average. Literally forced to stop a program that benefited the customer and retailer because corporate greed couldn’t tolerate the customer not being screwed.
But the point is the same right? Whether you call them countries or states or counties or municipalities, there are multiple levels of government with their own distinct tax structures, but Europe has no problem displaying the final sale price on their tags. Why would this be harder to implement in the US than in Europe?
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There is zero reason that can’t be on the price tag.
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Prices tags are normally prepared using computers which are famously good at maths. Here in the UK, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have different rules for tax on certain products and yet everything is advertised with the final price.
I would love tax-included pricing (or maybe VAT?), though from what I know:
TV ads, sponsorship spots, circulars all complicate this.
TV ads usually don’t mention pricing for national brands. Local ads like circulars are generally for just one store anyway. All of this would be low effort to do. The only reason they don’t is it tricks people into spending more than they want.
Prices are printed on packaging for many things too, books, magazines, bags of potatoe chips.
So then stores would have to cover the manufacturer price with a higher one just in their store. Which is a waste of time and material if you can just condition a population to ignore the price jump at the register.
Or you can just put it on the shelf like every store does now.
None of these a reasons the store, which posts it’s own prices and barcodes, can’t just include the total on the tag, or better yet set the price to the nearest whole number (or division of .10/.25) and take the tax out of that full amount. I know because I live in the midwest, I worked in retail/grocery store and our store piloted a test program of doing exactly that. Customers were incredibly happy and our overall sales actual went up because people who didn’t normally shop with us started to because it was easier to budget.
We got shut down by corporate beancounters who were freaking out because we were supposedly making less money. Except our sales and profits were up for the 8 weeks we demo’d the program and 4 weeks after we were forced to stop sales dropped below our year-on-year average. Literally forced to stop a program that benefited the customer and retailer because corporate greed couldn’t tolerate the customer not being screwed.
So does Europe.
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But the point is the same right? Whether you call them countries or states or counties or municipalities, there are multiple levels of government with their own distinct tax structures, but Europe has no problem displaying the final sale price on their tags. Why would this be harder to implement in the US than in Europe?
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Germany certainly is a state if you use the right definition.
And counties that have their own sales taxes. So not even within the state is the rate the same.