Hacker News Reader

Comment by jopsen | Hacker News Reader

> Sales tax exclusive is a common complaint from visiting Europeans. It is seldom an issue for Americans because most aren’t paying with exact change or calculating budgets to the penny.

I know it's true -- when I loved in SF the fact that I couldn't tell what things cost just made me give up looking at the price altogether :)

I just picked things in safeway and payed without even listening to what the amount charged was...

But it's probably a bad idea to encourage this kind of behavior.

If you want the free market to work, you'll need engaged customers who at-least reads the price tag.

View on HN

FYI many items in Safeway are not taxable, due to the exclusion for certain types of food (grocery, not restaurant).

> know it's true -- when I loved in SF the fact that I couldn't tell what things cost just made me give up looking at the price altogether :) I just picked things in safeway and payed without even listening to what the amount charged was...

I'm sorry that it's so hard for you to multiply by 1.1

09:00 - you're in Santa Fe, NM. What's the sales tax rate? OK, good, you've figured it out.

12:00 - after a delightful morning checking out the history of genocide in North America, you decide to drive the Turquoise Trail (NM14), a national scenic byway, south to Albuquerque. You stop to wander and eat lunch in Madrid, NM. What's the sales tax rate? Wrong, you're no longer in the city of Santa Fe, but Santa Fe county.

17:00 - you arrive in Albuquerque and go to buy something at a regular store. What's the sales tax rate? Ah, now you're getting it: you don't know, because now you're in Bernalillo County, NM.

Indeed, state and local sales tax in the US is complex.

There are around 15-20 different tax rates in my metro area, between state, regional (multiple county metropolitan council), county, and city specific taxes.

From the central city area, you can reach all of the 15-20 different sales tax rate areas within 30-45 minutes.

Fine. You can list the price in an ad before tax, so long as you make that VERY clear. There is no excuse for not listing the all-in price on the shelf or tag in the store. The person who completes my transaction will be charging me the exact amount of tax, so the value is known. Taxes don't change very often. Usually years go by and there will be months of notice before they do change.

In my municipality the tax rate varies by what items you are purchasing and those items change at least yearly but frequently mid year.

There are tax regimes where how much of an item you buy changes the calculated tax.

You estimate at 1.1x and you'll be good, especially if paying by card. Unless you're literally penny pinching, you don't even notice paying 8.75% vs 8.85% or whatever. But if you really just want to hate the US, I can't stop you.

> the history of genocide in North America

Ah, I see where you're coming from.

> Ah, I see where you're coming from.

You almost certainly do not.

As a foreigner, I just multiply everything by 1.1, so I know the average upper limit on what I’m buying.

If the sales tax rate ends being less than 10%, it’s money saved. If it ends up being more than 10%, that would be my new multiplier that I’d use as baseline.

Well, yeah, when traveling you kind of have to do that especially since it's unlikely you know the exact exchange rate at that moment. It would quickly become unacceptable to live that way every day of your life unless you are particularly insensitive to price.

The entire range of places you listed differ by slightly more than one percent in tax rate.

If you’re that price sensitive, you can probably save a lot more money by just visiting five to ten stores to comparison shop for every item since you can likely save far more than one percent that way.

Or just fork over the extra penny per dollar when you visit Santa Fe the city

Congrats on looking the tax rates up!

I didn't think the point was penny-saving. It was knowing what the final price will be.

I also didn't really get the GP's point that just assuming a rate of 10% is a good enough estimate, so there's also that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com