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The sales tax in canada is brutal

Not really. The highest sales tax is 15% (NB, NL, NS, PEI).

I'll grant that's higher than in some US states, but come over to Europe where VAT is usually 19-25%. Although at least in Europe prices are advertised including VAT, so no mental math is required to calculate how much it will end up costing.

That's higher than in all US states. The highest US state sales tax is 7.25%. The highest municipal+state sales tax is 12.8%.

That's a huge outlier, though. The average is 5%, and many states exempt huge swaths of goods (such as groceries) and some have no sales tax at all.

> and many states exempt huge swaths of goods (such as groceries) and some have no sales tax at all.

Groceries are exempt from GST/PST or HST in Canada as well.

That certainly changes the cost-of-living, but it's not really relevant to the point about exchange rates and price differences, since most people compare prices pre-sales tax. Sticker prices, in the US and Canada (and Europe?), don't typically include sales tax.

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