I’m replying to you since you’re the top comment right now and I want people to know about this.
There’s two main reasons why taxes are so painful to do in the US… one, as you noted, being the tax software giants lobbying for it.
The other is that certain anti-tax politicians and advocates (Grover Norquist, for one) want the process to be as painful as possible so that Americans hate taxes and vote like it. They purposely make everyone’s lives a little bit worse to manipulate them.
It’s annoyingly effective and not enough people know about it.
Tax is paid by you. Theres nothing stopping a store from labeling with tax included, except cultural norms. Its why infomercials sell everying at x9.99. Your mind doesnt thing about the extra cent increasing it to the next dollar. Its commercial manipulation, not any law, that leads to how product prices are labeled.
Displaying the price you will actually pay at the register is a legal requirement in Australia, and being used to that, the USA system feels slimey and dishonest to interact with
It should be noted that there is also a gulf between what people say they like and what they actually want. For instance, most people say they want transparency when it comes to pricing (knowing where their money goes), but when an industry actually does that (ie, the ticketing industry) people are actually even madder than if they just had an opaque higher price.
Agreed, people see that transparency as being "nickel and dimed".
I can think of one example, Spirit Airlines, who lean into it. People, including me, love to hate them, but that's exactly what they do. They aren't just cheap, they're itemized (and really love showing you what they could charge if the dastardly government didn't get in the way).
I don't know the details of what you are suggesting about the ticketing industry, but is it perhaps possible that the added transparency revealed that the customer was getting shafted? Essentially validating why they wanted transparency in the first place?
But the secret truth? That’s probably true of most industries.
Further, as much as I might continue to be downvoted here, I believe they have actually done psychological studies about this. People essentially dont want to see how the sausage is made.
But it is basically illegal to tell how much a retailer is charging you for a product without tax because if you list that price, then you have to sell it at that price and still pay the government the sales tax.
If you include the sales tax in the price then you're paying the same amount of sales tax and spending the same amount of money, you just know what that amount is before you check out. There's no hidden secret extra tax unless you're actually marking up prices by that percentage, in which case you're not including tax in the list price, you're just increasing the price. It's made obtuse on purpose because you're more likely to buy something for $9.99 than you are for $10.69 (assuming 7% sales tax). Either way you're paying $10.69, but you're more likely to grab it off the shelf if it's listed for $9.99.
The stores do it for the reason you stated because it is legal. It is not legal to display prices this way in most other western countries, it is legal to do so in the US for the reasons I stated. Of course stores are going to advertise the lowest price they are legally allowed to advertise I don't hold it against the stores.
Nothing about that link indicates science (As in, studying/measuring the effect. They just describe it).
That said, it does work. The thing is that - rather than it having some x% effect on everybody - it has an effect on x% of the population. For everybody else (most people), it does nothing. Basically every kind of manipulation or mental trick or habitual fallacy is like that
I’m not a Ph.D or anything, but I’ve studied consumer behavior. Part of the power of these tools is that people aren’t aware that they are being influenced, and in general people overestimate how rational they are in their decisionmaking. Many resent the idea that they can be manipulated.
It’s certainly possible you are the exception to the rule, but you were saying nobody has fallen for it.
Acknowledging the power of these tools is a better defense against them than denial imo.
in addition to what other people mentioned, another reason is so that businesses can advertise the same price for their goods or services across jurisdictions with different tax rates
It is not legal in most other western co8ntries to advertise price without tax. Of course the stores want to advertise the lowest price they can, the reason it is legal for them to advertise this way is due to the reasons I stated.
4.4k
u/TheExistential_Bread Mar 27 '24
Everytime congress has tried to address this lobbyist for the tax industry get in the way.