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Comment by Tloewald | Hacker News Reader

Certainly trying to use Truth in Advertising was always my first thought, but Truth in advertising laws are pretty toothless and I imagine any attempt to do something like this using that mechanism would get tied up in the courts for a long time.

I would love someone to at least make the case -- it seems like a non-partisan thing, surely the free market types should be in favor of price transparency, while liberals should be against misleading consumers.

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The free market types I know are generally opposed to requiring tax be included because they think it would hide the "true" cost of the tax from consumers. They seem to like when a consumer is disappointed by the difference between the base and "plus tax" price because they think it will motivate people to try to get sales taxes reduced or eliminated.

> The free market types I know are generally opposed to requiring tax be included because they think it would hide the "true" cost of the tax from consumers.

In this case the "hidden cost" would be clearly printed on the receipt.

I agree, but only if they don't include the merchant's profit margin in the price, either.

Exactly: If someone wants to argue that there's a dollar-amount that represents a "deeper truth" -- as opposed the amount the customer actually has to pass over the counter -- then why stop halfway at taxes?

A rhetorical question, since obviously because it serves the agenda of the merchants, who want to set up a "let's you and him fight" situation between consumers and government.

If we really start peeling the onion, we can talk about the merchants' profit margins, and then also externalized costs in the form of stuff like pollution and bankruptcies (and the tax money spent to clean those up.)

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