My American Brethren! Can you explain this to me?

[derdeutschmachine]

It's like any other tax, some states are higher some are lower. Pa has a six per-cent tax but in philadelphia it's seven per-cent. The sales tax is added to product because the retailer has to pay taxes on what they sell, therein when you pay a sales tax you are essentially paying companies income tax.
look it up online, wherever you're headed look up sales taxes for the area.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

Okay, there are two types of taxes imposed by the states- flat tax, and income tax. The income tax, the one I prefer, is a progressive system, in which people are taxed increasing amounts based on their level of affluence. On the other hand, the flat tax is a tax system, in which you are charged a certain percentage of what you buy. This turns out being an extremely regressive system, because, while the poor usually end up having to spend the majority of their money, or even taking out loans, just to make ends meet, and therefore being taxed the full percentage, or over the full percentage, of the flat tax on their incomes- wealthy individuals do not spend a large percentage of their income and therefore are not taxed the full percentage of the flat tax.

The United States itself does not have a flat tax, and does have a national income tax. My home state, Texas, has no state income tax but has a relatively high flat tax. Americans tend to like the flat tax more than people from other areas of the world, as America is a quite conservative nation compared to other industrialized nations. However, even here it is not universally well-liked.

 

[LuminaryJanitor]

Man, that drove me mad when I was in the US... You can never get the right amount ready beforehand, and rather than fucking around with all that barely-distinguishable low-denomination currency at the register, I tended to just hand over notes. The end result was a half-kilo sack of change at the end of two months (which the chick at the duty-free store was less than enthusiastic to receive...).

 

[JanatUrlich]

Because Americans are too lazy to just put it in the price on the shelf like the English.

It's such a fucking huge ballache. I always forget that my item is gonna magically be more expensive when I get to the till. It's just another stupid American thing

 

[The Procrastinated End]

I really don't know the reason why they don't include the tax, but maybe it's for when theres an item that's on sale because that messes up the system.

 

[Dags90]

It's a big scam to give cashier manufacturers, repair people, etc more business. Every time the sales tax changes, all the machines have to be reconfigured. It's also widely variable by state, county and municipality. It probably has to do with popular systems of record keeping. I.e., the stores will ring up all purchases as retail and added tax because that's how they keep their records, rather than absolute and subtracting the tax. I think people tend to favor addition to subtraction in general.

I thought Americans were supposed to be the ones falling behind in math..

Because the government taxes; manufacturers, importers, shipping companies, and the stores, so to make up for the lost profits they charge sales tax.

That doesn't make any sense. Sales tax goes to the government, it's not a "business passing taxes onto consumers" scenario.

 

[The Lawn]

When I first moved here and I went into a store to buy something, don't remember what, it was one item for 16.99 and I remember the clerk asking for 17 something.
And I said that it had to be wrong, the sticker said 16.99 how could it be 17 something.
It probably would have helped if the clerk had just said there was sales tax instead of saying that the price was correct, because that just made me think he was trying to take my money for shits and giggles.
The commotion I was causing about this made the manager come over and I explained what was happening, he could tell I was from overseas and told me there was sales tax added onto the price.
So I humbly apologized to the cashier for berating him, payed for my merchandise and left.

 

[sarge1942]

it's a tax, the store tells you how much they are charging you, then the government goes "hey we wanna piece of that" . not quite sure why they don't just tell you up front.

 

[Sebenko]

Because Americans are too lazy to just put it in the price on the shelf like the English.

It's such a fucking huge ballache. I always forget that my item is gonna magically be more expensive when I get to the till. It's just another stupid American thing

This. Annoyed the hell out of me when I went to the US. Bloody ridiculous that I have to pay more than the price stated.

We have something like that here, called VAT, but the price you see is the price you pay.

 

[RandomWords]

Its a tax, it goes to the government. Its just another way for the government to get a little more money to do things with. It would be nice if I didn't have to pay them but what can you do? Oh its multiplied by .007 and added to the total.

Actually it's multiplied by 0.07. Sorry, math nazi.

Sorry it was a typo, meant to put the zero before the period. And a math nazi is WAY better than a grammar nazi

 

[RicoADF]

Taxes. There's a little bit added to the cost of everything. Yeah, it'd probably make more sense if they just included tax into the full price you see, but then that'd require a little more math.

In Australia they must include GST into the displayed price. Idk how they can allow them to do that, false advertising to me.

 

[slimjim1503]

Unless you are buying something expensive, it doesn't make that much more of a difference...

 

[KaiRai]

It's kind of stupid. Why isn't it just included in the price? That would make everyone's life a load easier.

 

[nunqual]

It's kind of stupid. Why isn't it just included in the price? That would make everyone's life a load easier.

So people will think they're getting a cheaper deal. But it isn't that hard to add it to the price, if I pay in cash I always just add a dollar.

 

[delet]

Taxes. There's a little bit added to the cost of everything. Yeah, it'd probably make more sense if they just included tax into the full price you see, but then that'd require a little more math.

In Australia they must include GST into the displayed price. Idk how they can allow them to do that, false advertising to me.

It is pretty stupid, but it's the way things work out. Basically, just add 10% to the price of anything, and that'll be what the price will probably amount to. For instance, brand new videogames are often 65$ instead of the advertised 60, so it's fairly close.

 

[Xojins]

So the government can get money? It's pretty simple to me.

This.

But it's not in all states; in New Hampshire there's no sales tax on anything, for example. But if you're going to California the taxes there are pretty high.

It's kind of stupid. Why isn't it just included in the price? That would make everyone's life a load easier.

It's a scheme. I think it would best be equated with the saying "pulling a fast one".

 

[Iron Lightning]

The whole "sales tax" thing. When buying stuff, it says one price when you see it on the self, right? But then when you take it to the cashier, it adds like 7% of the price to whatever you're buying, yeah? How does that make sense? My reasoning for asking this is that I'm going to Hollywood for a holiday next year, and I don't want to get caught out when I try to buy something.

So I'm asking any Americans reading this, why do shops in your country do that? Is there some legal reason why it happens? Do all shops do that over there? And for other people not from America, does this happen in your counrty, or does it make any sense to you? It's something I can't get my head around on my own.

EDIT: To clarify, what I'm basically asking is why can't American shops include VAT (or thier equivalent) in their prices?

It's the same reason that an item might cost $9.99 instead of $10.00, that is, when things seem cheaper people buy more. You won't have to calculate sales tax; every store that I've ever been to calculates the sales tax for you when you go to pay them.

It's not really anything to worry about so long as you bring 7% more cash.

 

[Aulleas123]

So the government can get money? It's pretty simple to me. And it's not in all states, some don't have it, I think Pennsylvania doesn't have it, but that might be food tax.

PA has a sales tax, Delaware does not. That's pretty much declared as a tax-haven.

Then again, I have a bias. I live in Philly where putting a page online has a tax (seriously, blogging is taxed and is called a business, I'll let you judge)

 

[WaywardHaymaker]

Yeah, everywhere here is like that. And as for why we don't just include sales tax on our price tags, I'd bet that it's because the disembodied voices on the commercials would rather say "Generic jeans! $19.99!" as opposed to "21.39!" I'm almost 100% that it's advertising or placebo-savings as to why they don't include sales tax.

 

[Eumersian]

It's kind of stupid. Why isn't it just included in the price? That would make everyone's life a load easier.

It could be because there are different tax rates in different states, and they put down the untaxed price for standardization. It might also be so that the tax on the item is properly noted, and people don't get confused about exactly how much it costs, and they know what base price they're paying before taxes. It's like with income taxes where you know how much you get paid, and then how much after taxes.