Not really an issue. Businesses change their prices every now and then due to inflation anyway. If sales tax is changed (like, in the UK, it occasionally is for alcohol), you just build it in to a change that was going to happen anyway. No extra admin for printing labels, changing websites, etc, is needed.
The big problem with including sales tax in the stated price is that people will quickly realize that the net price at a grocery store in, say, Los Angeles is more (or less) than the one across the street in Burbank, even if they both charge the same base price. In areas crowded with municipalities, this could quickly put a lot of retailers out of business.
This appears to depend on the store. One grocery I go to doesn’t make me sign, another does. I know that Discover at least has made signatures optional for smaller purchases. (Smaller but still over $100)
There is wonderful bread every place the Russians have ever been, but no, Estonia is one of the 3 European countries I’ve missed.
Something people don’t always realize is that some purchases are tax-exempt*. Even restaurant and hotel bills. If you build the taxes into the price, how do you remove them and account for the removal on a tax -exempt transaction?
Not to mention the issue of advertising - there are probably at least 10 different jurisdictions with different sales tax rates within an hour of my house. Stores do not want to make sure that the west side of the street gets the circular with Queens prices and east side gets the one with Nassau prices. And even if they manage that, there will still be problems with people not realizing the Queens and Nassau tax-included prices are not the same
- Government agencies and non-profit organizations are generally exempt from paying sales taxes and in some cases residents of adjacent states may be exempt.
The only place I’ve seen that is Brazil, where the meat is menu-priced and then the sides are weighed.
It was infuriating when Romanian waiters would bring bread and other appetizers before you even order, and then count them afterwards and add them to the bill.
A few of the cities I visited in Europe had an unusual way of collecting fares on trams and buses. It’s not exactly the honor system. You’re supposed to have a ticket, either a monthly or daily pass, or a paper ticket that you insert into a machine on the tram that stamps the current time on it. Most of the time, it never gets checked, but there are teams of inspectors who will board and ask to see tickets. If you can’t show them a pass or time-stamped ticket, you get fined.
The result of this is that when the tram arrives at a stop, it opens all the doors for people to get off and on. They don’t have to funnel all the boarding passengers through the front door and the fare box, which really speeds things up.
I have no idea if that would be workable in the U.S. There could be legal issues, or maybe transit agencies just figure there would be so many free riders that they’d lose too much money. I never did see the travelling inspectors, so I don’t know if they assess the fines on the spot, or if they mail them to the offenders.
They have that system in some places in the US. For example, in San Francisco if you have a Clipper tap card, you can enter the bus at any door, and tap to pay.
Similar, but not quite the same. Everyone still has to do something while boarding the bus, and it sounds like there are still some cash customers that have to queue up at the front door. If you just add 15 or 20 seconds at each stop, it adds up.
In Soviet eastern bloc, the honor system was a bit different. When boarding the bus, you go to a pay station, tear a blank ticket off a roll, drop coins into a noisy metal box, time-stamp your ticket. Other passengers could tell if they heard the correct coins jingle into the box. There were also inspectors who would board and check tickets, but face-saving had more deterrent value in a true honor system.
One thing I saw in car parks in Switzerland and Italy was a green/red light embedded in the ceiling above each space representing full/empty. Cruising around the lanes looking for empty spaces was so much simpler.
The light rail here in Tucson has you validate onboard. We have seen inspectors and been asked for our tickets. My understanding from travel boards is in Italy, anyhow, they give you a ticket on the spot and I believe demand payment on the spot.
Never heard of that place. Where is it?
In the Soviet era, I remember getting on a crowded tram in Moscow (via the rear door, if I recall correctly - it may have been the only legal entrance), with the conductor (or ticket machine) at the other end. My 3-kopeck coin would get passed up to the front - via numerous passengers - and a short time later, I would have a valid ticket - also passed through many hands before I got it.
The “push button to summon waitstaff” thing is pretty common in Japan. Also, you don’t wait at the table for the server to bring your check: it’s already at the table. At pretty much every restaurant, regardless of how nice, you just take your check and pay at the cashier’s station near the door. If there’s not someone already there, then someone typically comes running pretty quick as soon as you start moving in that general direction.
Oshibori are also a thing in Japan:
In US restaurants I always visit the bathroom after ordering so I can wash my hands. If US restaurants started providing oshibori, I’d probably just use them instead.
Those are starting to show up in the U.S.; always seemed pointless to me. The garage where I first saw them only has a few aisles, so there’s one path going up and one path going down. From a distance, you can see the green or red lights over the parking spaces, but you’re going to wind up driving past all of them anyway. You’re going to see that empty space when you get to it, so knowing in advance that it’s empty doesn’t give you any information you can use. And knowing how things like that are maintained in the U.S., enough of the sensors will be broken in five years that they’ll be even less useful than they are now.
A variation on this is used in some lots near me. They have multiple parking levels, and a sign near the entrance tells you how many open spots are on each level. So if you see levels 1-3 only have 10 spots each, but level 4 has 50 spots, you can just drive all the way up without wasting time on the first three levels, knowing that there will be far more options on level 4. If you drive a large truck like I do, this is great information to have.
How about something we have in the US that should be borrowed elsewhere.
Yellow lines on the roads that separate oncoming lanes of traffic; white lines separating lanes going the same way. We’ve had this in the US since the 70s and it looks like they have it in Canada. Europe doesn’t have it; don’t know about the rest of the world.
They have a similar system on some of the crosstown NYC busses. Instead of swiping your Metrocard as you board the bus, you use it at a kiosk at the bus stop before the bus arrives to print out a small paper receipt. When the bus arrives all the doors open and you can just get on and find a seat, no need to crowd at the doors. An inspector is supposed to make random checks that everyone actually has their ticket but I have only actually seen that once.
They assess fines on the spot. And you’re screwed if you asked the ticket person point blank if you needed to stamp your ticket and they lied and told you “no.”
Ask how I know?
It’s also never clear whether the stamp has worked or if you’ve gotten the right stamp.
There are a lot of American systems for tickets (check on entry, show your ticket mid-trip, go by the honor system, with random mid-trip checks - but showing your ticket always works, buy the ticket mid-trip); they’re all better than the stupid, arbitrary stamp thing. I hate that system and hope it doesn’t spread and that it dies out where it already exists. Octopus-style cards, OTOH, are awesome. Those need to be everywhere.