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Comment by 6493747485 | Hacker News Reader

The argument against this, specifically with regard to taxes, is that baking in the tax conceals the impact of that tax from the consumer. Obviously this primarily applies to sales taxes since production taxes aren't consumer facing (even if they impact consumers) but it's still better imo than simply not having that information since most laws are already fire and forget type affairs and so their costs can compound over time to degrees that aren't as immediately obvious to the public if they aren't displayed frequently and visibly.

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I'm not objecting to knowing what the taxes are, I'm objecting to companies being able to hide the taxes to make switching look like a better deal than it actually is.

If Verizon advertises, say, $50/mo cellphone service, they're actually going to charge you an extra $15 or so, but they won't tell you what you're paying in taxes until you've actually signed up for the service and paid the switching costs. I want Verizon to advertise $65/mo ($50/mo base + $15/mo fees).

Or they won't tell you until you receive your first bill, when it's far too late to cancel the contract.

Some phone providers just eat the taxes, and that's fine at some level, but also problematic if you're on a $15/month plan and your city charges a $5/month per line telecom tax and other cities don't. And I'm not a fan of hiding mandatory uniform fees.

But how does Verizon run a national advertised price and include the taxes when telephone taxes vary based on your city, county, and state, and sometimes which part of the city/county.

If they mail it to you, then sure, they should be able to calculate it assuming your main service address is the same as your mailing address. But even if they have it in the window at their shop, they could include the taxes as if you lived at the shop, but actual taxes will be based on your service address.

Don't have a nationally advertised price, because the cost of telecom services isn't nationally identical. Instead:

- Use the highest possible taxes and fees for any address in the service area of the store. Nobody is going to feel deceived if it turns out they had to pay less money for their phone service. - Provide a low and high range of taxes and fees for that same area and fine print that taxes vary based on service location. Verizon can't charge more than the high amount, and the low amount has to correspond to at least one service area that is actually billed that amount. - Provide a table listing out taxes, fees, and total price for each tax zone within the service area. This could be combined with the other two, and probably should be available unless there's, like, 200 different tax zones in the area of the store.

All of these are a darned sight better than "we don't have to mention anything about taxes and fees until you're a month into the contract and they can be any number we please".

Goods distibuted in samw geographical area generally have similar prices even after transportation, so shop in county A that has lower tax, will be cheaper than same shop 1 kilometer (1 mile) in county B, that has higher tax. Why would the shop want to hide the tax?

In EU shops are made to show price per kilogram / liter too.

Ahahaha, like retailers care about me so much and want me to be more active in local politics. That could be achieved by including the information on the receipt, but omitting it from the advertised price is a low grade scam.

I agree that taxes need to be applied separately so the public knows how much they are paying in taxes. Also, if you required including the tax, it would not be possible for most sites to advertise any prices without the user creating an account, providing their shipping address and logging in, since tax rates vary by country, county, even municipality.

Please explain in excruciating detail the need for an account to provide a single input box for zip code to just calculate fees? I need a serious breakdown of the logic behind this position, because from where I'm sitting, it seems to me like you could determine someone's "country, county, even municipality" with that single piece of data and no more.

Zip codes aren't specific enough to determine tax rates. Zip codes are assigned by the post office to facilitate delivery of mail, not to determine which taxing districts an address belongs in. You really need the whole address sometimes. Because the city name on the mailing address often indicates the city, but not always. And some taxing districts don't follow city boundaries anyway. And you need a process to handle exceptions, because boundaries are complex and sometimes mistakes are made.

Fair enough! However...

I'm still not seeing why that experience requires an account, so while this response is academically interesting, it doesn't actually address the purpose of my comment. Any reason why these calculations can't be performed without an account? Any reason why needing to enter the street address is functionally different from needing to enter the zipcode for this functionality, or were you just attempting to add detail/nuance?

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