Tell me about taxation in America

[Serafina]

For why they never do it? Time management is the largest and most overriding reason. For retail, it would take too many hours that could be spent just clocking it on the register.

And having different taxes per state has long been a problem with American taxes as a whole. Makes a fucking myriad mess of which state does what, where, and what federal regulations stand and which don't.

Um - they have to calculate it anyway, since they are selling it anyway.
So the whole difference is that you have to take the calculation that is already made by the register a hundred times a day and print it on the price tags.
That is hardly an stupendous amount of work. The worst that can happen is that you need to manage price tags for every county differently - hardly a logistic nightmare, i would say.

Yes, it is more work, but it's not like it could not be done at all.

[Master of Ossus]

One quick thing I'd like to add before I'm off to class.
One thing struck me as rather odd and iritating when I was on holyday in the states: Taxes not included on prices of products.
I can immagine that this makes taxes a lot more visible, and a lot more iritating. When I normally buy something, I pay exactly whats on the tag, whether that includes taxes or not (it does) doesn't register, you just pay. If you buy something in america, It might be the same cost including taxes, but it seems more expensive, becouse you have to pay taxes seperately, like a not so nice surprice at the checkout.

Well, that was my two cents.

And my spell check doesn't seem to be working, please excuse glaring mistakes...

With respect, I rarely hear serious objection to sales taxes in the US--there are probably a lot of reasons for this (it's local--maybe I realize that California needs better roads and my county needs libraries more than I understand that the country as a whole needs to subsidize wind farms; it's absurdly easy to avoid [e.g., buy things like unprepared food that isn't subject to sales tax in many states, shop in neighboring counties or states, buy off the internet--I hear that place sells all kinds of things these days, etc.]).

Income, payroll, and the inheritance taxes are the ones people complain about on the street. Most scholars hate the US Corporate Tax system, too, arguing that it's much high, very poorly structured, or both (usually) although I don't hear a lot of populist anger about that one, either.

[Eldalote]

With respect, I rarely hear serious objection to sales taxes in the US--there are probably a lot of reasons for this (it's local--maybe I realize that California needs better roads and my county needs libraries more than I understand that the country as a whole needs to subsidize wind farms; it's absurdly easy to avoid [e.g., buy things like unprepared food that isn't subject to sales tax in many states, shop in neighboring counties or states, buy off the internet--I hear that place sells all kinds of things these days, etc.]).

Income, payroll, and the inheritance taxes are the ones people complain about on the street. Most scholars hate the US Corporate Tax system, too, arguing that it's much high, very poorly structured, or both (usually) although I don't hear a lot of populist anger about that one, either.

You're probably right, this was just my observation from a total of 8 days in the states, not what I actually heard people complain about.

[Ghost Rider]

For why they never do it? Time management is the largest and most overriding reason. For retail, it would take too many hours that could be spent just clocking it on the register.

And having different taxes per state has long been a problem with American taxes as a whole. Makes a fucking myriad mess of which state does what, where, and what federal regulations stand and which don't.

Um - they have to calculate it anyway, since they are selling it anyway.
So the whole difference is that you have to take the calculation that is already made by the register a hundred times a day and print it on the price tags.
That is hardly an stupendous amount of work. The worst that can happen is that you need to manage price tags for every county differently - hardly a logistic nightmare, i would say.

Yes, it is more work, but it's not like it could not be done at all.

But that's my entire point. The corporation realizes there are two ways to handle this.

A. Put Sales tax included on all their products varying for state to state, and account for different jurisdictions and even speciality taxes depending on location?

or

B. Let said computer handle it with a button and have it displayed on a receipt for anyone to see.

Corporations in their effort to save man hours figure it's better to let a computer calculate it and have it on a roll of paper rather then wondering what store's tax rate is based on jurisdiction.

And really, given that a single store in a mall can have a different price when everything is calculated then one five to ten miles away but selling the exact same product? It's a shitload more work to place different labels on them instead of letting some machine putter out the material. It's a rather fucked up system to say nonetheless.

[Phantasee]

One thing about the GST up here is that some businesses do include the 5% in their price - mostly coffee shops that process mostly cash transactions. This speeds things up, since a person looking to get a coffee and a doughnut can add both up and have the change ready by the time they get to the till. They have to mark that taxes are included on the menu, though.

As for other places, retail stores probably don't bother for... I don't know why. I guess if one started doing it the others could advertise their "cheaper" prices, and that would hurt any business that started the practice. And in most businesses, the transactions are Business to Business, and there nobody gives a shit what the tax amount is anyway, since they're just going to claim the inputs as credit against the GST they collect on their own product anyway, making it a non-issue.