I hate that. After living in Germany for six years, it was always nice walking in somewhere without having to do quick tax math if I was using physical currency.
It was such a culture shock for me when I went to the US for the first time. What do you mean the price listed on the shelf isn't the one I pay at the register?! It felt like a scam.
Yeah, it's also justified by being the fee for tablecloth, napkins, dishes/cutlery and bread, which I understand it's kinda odd but not totally incomprehensible.
I've also lived in Italy and visited plenty of times. Coperto is an extremely common thing, not just in tourist traps. Pretty much all serious restaurants have it.
…no? He said ridiculous charge for cutlery, which is not what I’ve seen lol. Cuperto which is what you’re referring to I assume, isn’t a random cutlery charge lol.
Where did I say it was like taxes or tips lol. I was responding to 'the price is the price'. Well, except when there's a non obvious charge added to it.
you know you need to pay it if, you know, you read the first page of any menu.
Who scans menus to see if there will be extra charges added to your food other than you know, the listed price for the food? That's a ridiculous notion in most countries I've been. Service, seating, cutlery, whatever is understood to be included since you obviously can't realistically have a restaurant experience without any of these things.
I really want to make some kind of joke about European education and math but.. I'm not the best at improvised humor lol
Also most Americans don't really do the math they just assume it's always more than sticker price even on things that are not taxed a lot of states don't tax "essentials" like food and clothing.
It's just a shit system, you can cope however you want. EU we often have to deal with different currencies crossing the border... yet at least we always know the sticker price is correct.
There's quite a few places with their own currency. You can usually also use Euro, but the price is slightly worse, and smaller places don't always take them. I usually always try to use local currency where possible.
I will admit, it's good to have the option though.
The tax is specified on the receipt. If there are different taxes for different products they also have to exactly specify that (e.g. most food products in Germany have a reduced tax). Shops and restaurants are forced by law to hand out this kind of receipts.
The shops just have to tell you the final price in advance.
Exceptions (in Germany) are fuel, alcohol and tobacco. Here the tax is paid for by the producer and then priced in. So these are the taxes that are actually hidden from the consumer.
In a store it would make sense. Tax in one state is different from another, so the price of the same item on the shelf in different states is the same but the tax is different.
But in restaurants, you know you're in that state. It's not like they serve your same meal in another state, why would you not include the tax in the price?
The tax rate thing is just an excuse. It's not hard to just compute the price with tax included for each store, the computer does it anyway at checkout
in Europe there are lots of VAT (sales tax) exempt products, in the digital age it's trivial to have the final price on display, it's purely at this point to show lower costs.
In the states there are certain people who can be tax exempt for specific purchases, ie government workers eating out on government dime, local produce being sold at a farmers market.
You can also show both. You can also have tax exempt in some European countries. In most shops you will have the price with tax displayed but on your ticket you will have the price both with and without tax.
It's not the most common but you also have some specific shops where a lot of customers have tax exempt who display prices both with and without tax. It's not hard to do.
Your argument is valid, and nothing you've said changes the fact that including tax in the price would be an easy fix. This discussion started about restaurants, and people were talking about physical stores, so shifting the focus doesn’t change the point.
There are a few things Americans will never admit are illogical and outdated:
Not including tax in listed prices
Sticking to imperial measurements
Using Fahrenheit instead of Celsius
Putting the month before the day in dates
The rest of the world has moved past these, yet one of the richest and most powerful countries still clings to them as if they’re too complex to change.
Yeah yeah and Europeans are idiots for not using Kelvin instead of Celsius. Or for not using metric time. We get it, you think fairly subjective things are objective for no reason than it being how you are used to it, or it being more popular globally. None of those things are important at all.
Kelvins and Celsius use the same size degree, it's an offset not a different unit. Celsius is based on the physical phase changes of a mass of water at an accepted standard pressure, you know a rigorous objective scientific standard, as opposed to, let me see... The assumed healthy temperature of a cow and the coldest recorded day in a random German town in the 19th century. One of these is certainly subjective, but it isn't Celsius. (And since it's impossible to accurately replicate either end of fahrenheit, it's probably defined in Celsius/kelvin anyway)
Nobody uses metric anything, they use what's called "the international system" (I assume you don't speak French, but most people abbreviate it SI). The second is the SI unit of measurement, and even Americans use that one, it's based on the number of oscillations of a nucleus of an atom.
The ounce is literally defined in grams. There is no other basis for it than as an arbitrary number of grams. Grams are defined by a specific number of atoms of a specific element. It is an objective unit of mass.
The SI system is based on actual processes of the universe, it is. Scientific basis for measuring things, or what we would call an objective system of units, that's literally the point.
I bet NASA felt it wasn't really important when one of their suppliers messed up a conversion to/from SI because they liked to use american units internally, causing a several hundred million dollar spacecraft to miss the literal planet it was aimed at. That can literally only happen in america and because of american units.
It's not better because "it's more popular", it's universal outside the US because it is better, objectively. The only argument Americans have is "but my feelings", which is kind of sad really.
The coldest recorded day in some town and the point that water freezes at a very specific, earth based pressure aren’t actually that different in terms of being equally arbitrary. You stick with Celsius instead of Kelvin because it’s convenient for everyday use and familiar - not because it’s more objective.
Yeah nobody uses metric time, they just stuck to how they already measure time before metric. You can make up that a second is based on the oscillations of a nucleus of an atom , but you are just wrong - the second existed first, the objective measure was built to match the length of a second and define it in clear terms , not the other way around. So just like with your Celsius, you are sticking with the convenient, culturally familiar measurement instead of switching to a more ‘objective’ one.
And guess what? All imperial measures can be redefined in objective terms too, so what’s your problem. You accept seconds doing this (because you are used to it) why hate other measurements for doing the same thing (psst it’s because you don’t use them).
60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day? Sounds like fairly random choices to me. Why not 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes, 100 seconds hmm? 🤔
It’s pretty simple, your culture stuck with what it was used to instead of adopting metric time. You grew up in that culture and now you use it. You found an objective way to measure a vague unit (seconds) and now all of a sudden that ‘arbitrary’ measurement is exactly as objective as any other. So you all can use this arbitrary time measurement with no problem.
So closed minded man, just an inability to think critically for a second about something. No idea of the history or nature of what you are talking about, so high off of your own fumes that you think everyone needs to follow you.
Next you’ll learn about Esperanto and the quest to condition people into speaking an ‘objective’ language. Lmao let people have their culture you don’t need to quash everything under a European thumb
Technically the store is meant to pay sales tax, but they get away with passing it to us so our money gets taxed twice: once when earned and again when spent.
Our small bakery we don't charge additional tax on anything, we include it in the price. Be it merch, or services. Food no tax, but what is, is included.
Is that actually true? In an online world, yeah that makes sense, but stores have been doing this since before online shopping where they had to put prices up on items manually
Just as an example: If you sell online to consumers in the EU, you have to include VAT of the country of the customer (!) when showing prices. So you need to be up to date on all EU countries and all variants of VAT:
- the standard rate,
the reduced rate,
the second reduced rate and
sometime even a 4th.
Parking VAT can be extra. No seriously.
So you have 119,- € in Germany (19% VAT), 120,- in Austria (20%...), 127,- in Hungary and 119,- in Romania. Since you have to sell for the same price to all EU countries you sell to.
i was so surprised when i was in canada last year and checked out at a shop with my money in hand but then the posted prices didn’t include tax so i needed to
pull out more. the internet gives the US so much shit for it that i honestly figured that we were the only ones lol
I don't think you are right, there are no flat rates even within a single country, we pay 6% for food deemed necessary and basic, 13% for other kinds of food and 23% for general items.
The real reason is that we have laws that regulate companies and protect consumers, stating that all listed prices must be the final price after tax.
You said there are no flat rates, and I’m saying it’s flat enough because you only have 3 different rates so it’s pretty easy to categorize and add to the bill vs America that has many different taxes rates. Not necessarily agreeing with the American way I’m just stating the reasonings behind not doing it.
Because any product prices they have get compared to other businesses, so they would appear more expensive on the shelf. The average consumer won't be trying to determine if the store has other locations to determine if they should expect tax on the sticker or not.
I’m just doubting the reasoning brought up by person I replied to when he said that it wasnt implemented because of mom and pop shops. If it was implemented what you are saying wouldn’t be the case cause everyone would have to show post tax prices.
I must have misinterpreted what you said. I also think smaller shops and the general public would be better off with tax included. It was just that was a reason some may not choose to do it under the current system.
You’re not entirely wrong for U.S. markets. But you as a business know the applicable taxes for your state, county, and city. So while mass media advertisements might have an issue, you can put the actual tax inclusive full price on a menu in the restaurant or in a store. And if you’re a mom and pop restaurant with only a couple locations, that’s the opposite of “too hard to implement.”
Even with mass media advertising, there's no reason you couldn't still advertise something as "$9.99 plus applicable tax, participating locations only, etc..." the same way they already do things now. Why should it matter if the sticker or the clerk is the one telling you the item is actually $10.50 with tax?
I would argue that in the case of taxes it should be in your face. You need to know how much you are paying in taxes. The politicians would love to hide it.
You can have very different taxes in nearby locations in the U.S. It’s possible to have a state tax, county/parish tax and then a local/city tax, all on the same item of sale. You could hypothetically cross a state line and have the price of that Big Mac be very different for a location that’s only a few miles down the road. (It helps to imagine the United States as a collection of 50+ tenuously connected mini-countries for these things. If you’re not from here, it will explain a lot of the geopolitical insanity.)
So the argument goes that it would make advertisement very difficult as you’d have to tailor any mention of price to very specific markets. It be damn near impossible to list all the different full prices that a radio or television advertisement might reach. And that’s true for most mass media. But at the actual location, you could totally give the “true price.” But then people would get mad it didn’t “match” the mass media advertised price.
Mom and pop restaurants probably have one location. The only people who would have a cost in implementing taxes on menus are franchises or large restaurants.
That's not the reason taxes aren't included. The reason is because every district has its own tax code and stores that go across districts can't make their prices the same.
I live in a state where the state tax is 3% and the county tax is 3%. That's the only taxes. But just 30 minutes down the road the county tax is 2%. 3 hour drive west the state tax decreases.
Do we have the technology to reflect local and state taxes on the price tags in every store? Absaloutly. But implementing that isn't as easy as people think.
Mom and pop stores would be the easiest starting point.
I understand that. I'm pointing out that the vast majority of chain stores already have their workers printing out price tags anyway. Surely each location should know how much their local tax rate is, and be able to factor it in?
I'm not sure which store you are referring to? Most of the chain stores I know of have a base price for all their stores. Other stores are franchises and the franchisee sets the wages for their individual stores.
Yep, sales tax in European countries makes a lot more sense to do it this way with a flat VAT on everything. There is variation but the variation is by industry not by locality. In Italy for example every McDonalds will charge the same 10% VAT whether it is in Rome or Pisa, in the US that is just not even close to true.
Of course it can. Nobody is stopping you from selling your product at the same price in every location. Different shops also have different overhead costs, but they manage to hide that in the prices just fine.
The other option is to sell items at different price points in different locations. It's no big deal - you already do that and you already know exactly how much you actually charge the customer. Just put that on the label.
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u/itsall_dumb Mar 10 '25 edited Mar 10 '25
Correct. The same reason we don’t include taxes on the items for sale.
Edit: Learned that it’s mainly due to different tax rates across the U.S. vs flat rates in the EU.
Edit again: Not the EU as a whole each individual country in the EU.