Correct, except that there is no federal sales tax.
Just strike the word “sales” from item 4 and it reads correctly.
And, upon rereading it, I would like to apologize for my grammar on my first post, especially the first two sentences. Ouch! :smack:
Hildea: “Receipt(s)” is the word you are looking for. Thanks for the info!
Thanks for all the informed answers.
It seems still that you could do with a simpler way of doing things, at least for my taste.
Of all the things that are different in day-to-day living between the USA and other places I have been, this is trhe one I find hardest to understand.
Nationwide value-added tax (the “GST”), plus (in most provinces) a provincial sales tax. In Ontario, the total is 15 %. We just get used to mentally addind 15% to the price of everything, and are pleasantly surprised when we encounter an exception.
These are two biggies right here. For nationwide retailers that distribute out of a few major warehouses this would become a logistical nightmare.
Say that Nike t-shirt that comes pre-priced from Nike for $19.99. X-Mart can ship it to all it’s locations and charge $19.99. If it had to price including sales tax it would have to have each store re-calculate the price and re-ticket every t-shirt depending on what the tax is.
And once these items are returned to the warehouse each season for redistribution, all the prices would have to be removed and repriced again if they sent them out again.
And with advertisements such as the weekly ads that are inserted in local newspapers across the country yet mass printed in one location, they would have to do seperate print runs for each differently taxed area to get the prices right. Major headache.
Yep. The GST was introduced to remove a hidden 13% federal manufacturing tax, and spread around to simply the tax structure. I have no idea if it worked as intended, but it does pull in a fair bit of cash.
This is related to the one thing I think non-Americans (well, maybe people from smaller countries; I bet Canadians get it just fine) have the most trouble understanding about us. Although we have, obviously, a federal government, many, many decisions are made at a state - or county, or municipal - level. It might be simpler to have some kind of federal tax that was the same everywhere, but it’s just not how we operate.
I don’t think people who have grown up under a unitary form of government ever really get what a federal system is like! 
Yup, and when you’ve got a brain-dead company like Fry’s Electronics, you can actually make a little money on the deal by buying stuff in Orange County, where the tax is something like 7.5%, and returning it in LA County where the tax is 8.25%. Their software calculates the tax by location, not by what you actually paid.
LOL
Well, that could be about the only reason to shop there I suppose.
Great idea though.
Well, (and this applies to Kyla as well), if we ever get a Scottish Parliament prepared to enact the tax-raising powers it has got but has never used, we might end up with a somewhat simialar system here. I mean no offence when I say I hope if it ever happens we do it better than you have.
I, as someone who is hopeless at arithmetic, would like to see things cost what the price tag says they should. When I lived in Maryland (5% sales tax), I used to think that maybe I should be calculating the tax. Now I’m in California (7.25%). There is not a chance that I could calculate 7.25% of anything without a calculator in anything like a reasonable amount of time. So now I know that, when I buy stuff, it will cost some (might-as-well-be) random amount more than the price tag says it does. So I use a credit card whenever I can, and never try to buy anything with exact change. But, on the list of things that bother me, it’s pretty far down.
Not offended. I can see how it would be confusing to someone unaccustomed to the system. We just take it for granted that the final price is going to be higher than the marked price. I’ve been startled from time to time when shopping away from home at how high or low that final price is, so I can only imagine what that would be like if you didn’t even realize there was going to be a difference to start with! FWIW, I’ve been in countries where the tax was figured into the total and found it rather odd at first…you pay exactly what it says on the label! How weird! Of course it makes things simpler, but I guarantee you if we tried that in the US people would have a shit fit.
I expect if you ever do have that in Scotland, you would have a tax valid for the entire nation, yeah? People here are so fanatical about local control, that’s why you get such variations in taxes from locality to locality. But most countries don’t seem to have that fixation.
One important reason I didn’t see in any previous posts for having the tax calculated at the end of the transaction is that not all items are taxable.
For example, if you went to the grocery store, and bought 3 lbs of potatoes, a six-pack of beer, 3 steaks and a copy of “Sports Illustrated”, with the whole thing costing somewhere between 10 and 15 dollars, your sales tax on it would only be around 25 cents(8% of $3). At least in my state and county, the only thing taxable would be the magazine($3), since basic foods are not taxable.
This varies by state and county in the US, and even possibly by city, just like the sales tax percentage does.
From a marketing/merchandising standpoint, it’s better to keep these costs separate from the actual cost, because it both obscures the sales tax differences between locations and clarifies the cost that the store is charging you. In other words, a statewide or nationwide chain can advertise a fishing rod for $20 in all locations, and have the sales tax not matter.
Plus it saves on printing- one ad can be printed/TV commercial shot with the same prices.
They don’t tax your beer!? :eek: I’m moving!
Here, in Pinellas County, FL there would be a 7% tax on the beer and magazine. 15 miles away, in Hillsborough County, it would be 6.5% ( I think. It’s either that or 6.75%. ) In Polk County, 40 miles away, it would be 6%. On top of that, if you’re paying for your grocery items with EBT (foodstamp card), then some of them that would be taxed if paid another way (soft drinks, cold deli items) are not taxable. Add to this the fact that not all items are taxed the same way in all counties of every state (or indeed at all, for certain items), and you’ll quickly realize why we don’t post prices inc. of tax.
Imagine if every chain store had to print a different ad for every single county in each state, with an additional set per city in some cases depending on whether the city has its own sales tax. And set the shelf tags in each store depending on locality (we do that to some extent already, but usually in an area spanning several counties), and post two prices for many of the products in the store depending on method of payment, and then getting all sorts of ugliness when the signs make it appear that the EBT recipients are getting a discount as opposed to just not being taxed when spending taxpayer-originated money. It’d just be too much.
When you’re accustomed to it, as we are, it’s not usually too difficult to figure out how much it’ll cost at point of sale. For me, it’s 7%. $1 on the shelf = $1.07 at the register. You get used to the percentage wherever you live and you can usually get a good estimate of the tax before you get to the checkouts, even if you’re not very good at math.
I agree with the other posters about the incomprehension of our particular federal system. The day-to-day lives of Americans are (generally) affected much more profoundly by their local governments (up to state level) than by the federal government. Since all of the sales taxes go to local governments, it’s good to see how much we’re paying per transaction for their benevolent guidance.
The price displayed should be the price paid. How do you prove you are from out of state. We have duty-free sales here but they require a passport to show you ain’t a NZ’er.
Here the sales tax issue is rather complex: We have a state-wide sales tax, a county-imposed tax that varies from county to county, and in some areas municipal sales taxes, too. So, the small chains have the same savings for flyers and such as the national ones - with only one set of prices to have to worry about by ignoring sales taxes.
I don’t understand that question. With the exception of buying things that are age-related (cigs, beer, liquor), you don’t have to show any ID to make any purchase. So if you went across state/county lines to avoid paying taxes, well, that’s just too tough for the State with the higher taxes, that’s all.
Oh, we don’t have to calculate the sales tax ourselves.
We just go to the register and they tell us exactly how much it’s going to cost 
Shops have sales all the time and don’t seem to have trouble re-pricing
Doesn’t matter, shops often (most of the time?) have different prices from other shops selling the same item in order to compete with the local market. So the prices won’t necessarily be the same anyway.
Well, they don’t. The consumer might WANT the sales tax displayed, and that might be the primary reason that it’s like this, the people want it. No reason why you can’t break down the tax on the receipt though.
See my response to point 2.
Retailers can advertise $x.xx + tax and then ticket the individual items with the actual store price.