In other coin-related news, the Federal government has announced that it will end production of the Canadian one-cent coin starting in fall 2012. Prices will be rounded up or down to the nearest 5 cents. Link from the CBC.
Last time I proposed this for the US, someone told me stores would round ALL prices up to the next 5 cent level.
Countdown to crazy: conspiracy theories commencing in 5 … 4 … 3 …
The Penny Plunderer will have his day!
Here’s the official announcement from the Ministry of Finance:
Link. I will not be surprised to see retailers announcing no-penny policies.
Well, let’s see.
Eliminating the penny? Check.
Introducing polymer banknotes? Check.
Road trains sighted in Ontario? Check.
Use of metric? Check.
We’re only a mob of kangaroos and a new accent away from being Australian!
You could do worse: you could get rid of your nickles and be like the New Zealanders.
So few transactions are in cash that this will have no practical effect. As long as sales tax is in effect, the cent will hang around since merchants cannot round those amounts. Bus fares in Montreal are already stated in fractions of a cent.
And I never understood why merchants would piss off potential customers by rounding up. The amounts involved are trivial and the customers’ wrath is not. If I were a merchant, I would put up a big sign saying that I was always rounding down. (This might, of course, be accompanied by a small price increase, but no one will notice since prices are always increasing.)
I explain this every couple of months, when this subject is raised here. I am Australian, I’ve been living in a smallest-change-free world for a couple of decades now.
When we ditched the 1c and 2c coins, in 1992, 20 years ago, the gov’t supplied a simple formula:
Prices ending in 1 or 2 are rounded down, 3 or 4, up. 6 or 7, down. 8 or 9, up.
Civilisation did not collapse.
Nothing happened except that we now don’t have to fuss with worthless copper coins. It’s all good. There were a few dickheads who couldn’t compute that the formula means that they “win” as often as they “lose” a few cents, but everyone ignored them. They got used to it. No one wants to bring back 1c and 2c coins. No one. Not even paranoid conspiracy buffs.
Now there’ll be two pages of Americans claiming that it can’t be done. We did it, 20 years ago.
I’m going to preempt them by saying that I’m an American who really wishes we’d do it. While we’re at it, I’d like to ditch the $1 bill for a coin.
This is exactly the formula recommended by the Canadian government. The Finance Ministry mentioned learning from the Australian experience in their backgrounder. 
Actually, the rounding takes place on the final amount, after tax is added. If the customer is paying by debit card, etc, there is no rounding. Only cash transactions get rounded.
I think that there would have to be a final, optional, step added to the transaction and printed on the receipt though, after the customer indicates the method of payment. “If cash, indicate rounded amount and print that.”
How is this handled in Australia?
From a recent supermarket receipt:
Those Bastards!
They killed Penny!
The un-rounded amount is shown as a subtotal on your receipt. If you’re paying by cash, there’s a 1 or 2 cent rounding adjustment shown just before the final total.
As far as tax is concerned, retail prices in Australia always include sales tax (10% GST). If the price tag says $10.00, that’s what you pay at the checkout. So there’s no additional complication from that.
Businesses that deal with a lot of cash typically pre-round all their prices - a cafe wouldn’t price their coffees at $2.99, they’ll be $2.90 or $3.00. For the most part the only places you see prices with odd cent amounts is supermarkets and some department stores. (And even then, some department stores have recently started pricing everything at even dollar amounts).
Now all threads from Dopers from Canadia will be officially centsless…
:: runs screaming from room ::
Wish they’d do something similar with the Euro. 1c and 2c are just useless.
But they’ll never disappear.
Because they have been talking about this for over a decade. Everyone I know has a big pile of pennies, some where in their house.
My husband has enough to make a battleship!
Ironically, just before I saw this story, I has cleared the pennies out of my coin pouch and was planning to take them to a bank or Coinstar to get rid of them…
Penny is the only reason I watch that show.
Evidence that they’re not necessary and are just clutter.