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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
bysabbede ( 2678435 ) writes:
Can we just mint a ton of them once or twice a decade? I get that it doesn't make sense to spend more than one cent to mint a penny, but we should refresh the supply every now and again.
byArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) writes:
Why bother? Nostalgia? Just to add some perspective here, when the US first discontinued the small penny, which was half of a cent, it was worth roughly 15 cents in today's money. The large penny, (which got smaller at point) which was one cent, was worth more than today's quarter at about 30 cents.
So back then, prices were incremented by more than today's quarter. There's no reason we can't simply do the same today. We may as well even get rid of nickels and dimes while we're at it. A nickel and a dime today won't even get you a slice of pie.
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byPCM2 ( 4486 ) writes:
One reason I can think of is that different states and municipalities impose different rates of sales tax at the register. Multiplying a retail price by 8.75% may not always produce an even, round number.
byYrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) writes:
US military in Europe did away with pennies in 1980. The only place you could use a penny was the Post Office.
Nary a problem.
Round up or down to the nearest .05 or .0. It averages out over time.
bywill4 ( 7250692 ) writes:
It will take a bit for Wal-mart, which introduced digital price tags nationwide recently, Target and Kroger to ensure that all their goods round up to the nearest 5 cents including tax for the local jurisdiction.
The stores have been trying to eliminate cash handling since the pandemic to lower their own costs and "because it's convenient" according to the store. "Convenient" begin the code word for "convenient and more profitable for the store" and not the customer.
byjjhall ( 555562 ) writes:
They don't need to adjust the shelf price, just round to the nearest nickel on the final after-tax total. Some transactions will round up by 2 cents, some will round down. Over a given timeframe the net rounding will be zero. Same for customers, their net difference over a number of transactions will also be zero. Adjusting the shelf price will always be a guess anyway since a "20% off" sale or coupon will break the carefully-calculated adjustments.
byChaset ( 552418 ) writes:
That would net them 2.5 cents per transaction on average. I guess I could see that level of greed/pettiness on the part of corporate entities in this day and age, but such a small benefit would probably be drowned out by the effect of not being able to advertise a price, say, 1 cent less than their competitor. They won't get that 2.5 cents if the customer decides to go somewhere else. That, in addition to any customers who have a choice being disgusted/repelled by such pettiness and choosing someplace el
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byPCM2 ( 4486 ) writes:
Welllll, a bunch of countries use VAT, where you pay whatever is on the label. In the US, what you pay for a product will depend on where you buy it, despite it having the same price on the tag..
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bytest321 ( 8891681 ) writes:
I think it's not connected to being VAT or Sales Tax. The difference is that the law in many or most countries requires the displayed price to be final. Each seller is responsible to update the sticker or the shelf label such that all local taxes are included. If the tax somehow changes by district, then you update the sticker in each district, or you choose one common price and eat the tax difference.
In my place a hamburger menu is advertised 10 €; if I request it to-go then necessary-goods VAT 6% app
byJSG ( 82708 ) writes:
In the UK (flirted with EU, in and out and shake it all about within my lifetime!) we have similar rules.
The price on the ticket is what you pay at the till, with regards taxation etc. A receipt must provide a full breakdown if requested and will generally do so anyway.
The price on the ticket is called "an invitation to treat". That is a legal term related to forming a contract. You accept the invitation by toddling up to the checkout and offering to buy the item at the price stated on the ticket/label.
byjonbryce ( 703250 ) writes:
In the UK you quite often see different eat in and take-away prices listed to reflect the fact that tax rates are different.
byMalc ( 1751 ) writes:
Itâ(TM)s definitely about the law requiring pricing to show the final price. I get it that tax rates are variable based on locality in the US, even within a state or a city. Thereâ(TM)s much less variability here in the UK (VAT is the same rate everywhere and only varies if certain goods are deemed worthy of a discount). No reason why taxed and tax free prices canâ(TM)t both be shown in the US. This is also common in some places here, especially where businesses will be buying items with
by0xG ( 712423 ) writes:
Welllll, a bunch of countries use VAT, where you pay whatever is on the label
This has *nothing* to do with 'Value Added Tax'!
VAT is a taxation system where product are taxed at every level from manufacture to retail - but only on the 'value added'.
Inclusive pricing just shows the final price of a product, including taxes. But the taxes can be of any sort.
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bydskoll ( 99328 ) writes:
You just round the final total to the nearest 5 cents if someone pays cash. That is what happens in Canada.
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bySpinlock_1977 ( 777598 ) writes:
We Canadians eliminated the penny in 2013. But, like most other Canadians, I have a box of the damn things in the corner of my bedroom. Yeah, we don't stamp out new ones, but we still have lots of them kicking around.
byfahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) writes:
We Canadians eliminated the penny in 2013. But, like most other Canadians, I have a box of the damn things in the corner of my bedroom. Yeah, we don't stamp out new ones, but we still have lots of them kicking around.
Several articles have noted that pennies will remain exchangeable for the foreseeable future and legal currency forever. So people in the U.S. should be able to use them up / get rid of them (through payments) eventually.
byEvilSS ( 557649 ) writes:
They may take them to a bank or kiosk to cash them in, but no way most people will get rid of them through payments. That's one of the problems with them, no one wants to carry them so they pile up. I remember my parents had like half a dozen coffee cans full of coins, 99% pennies. Hell there are a pile of them in my center console in my car right now that will most likely never get spent.
bybazorg ( 911295 ) writes:
Hell there are a pile of them in my center console in my car right now that will most likely never get spent.
In the USA is it common to have self service tills at supermarkets that accept coins?
It takes patience and free time but occasionally I clear out the wallet by spending some extra time at one of those tills, looking like a strange gambling addict.
byjjbenz ( 581536 ) writes:
I just got this image of bazorg feeding 5,000 pennies into the self checkout.
byncc74656 ( 45571 ) * writes:
In the USA is it common to have self service tills at supermarkets that accept coins?
If it accepts cash, it should accept both coins and bills. Any change I manage to accumulate usually gets fed into the coin slot at a self-checkout before I swipe a card to provide the rest of the payment. It's better than handing it off to a Coinstar machine, as those skim off a percentage of what you feed them.
byJSG ( 82708 ) writes:
A country that actually has pennies (not cents) still has them. Ours have a tiny piece of thrice blessed unicorn horn baked into each one.
We're weird.
bylarwe ( 858929 ) writes:
I grew up in Australia. Australia went from pounds/shillings/pence to dollars and cents in 1966 (Valentine's Day, specifically https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - my mother told me about this song and sang it to me). Australia retired its 1c and 2c coins in 1990~92 (it's a bit fuzzy). When I left Australia in 1999, in tidying up I found a box of pennies and ha'pennies from the pre-decimal era and a bigger box of 1c and 2c coins. These things stick around forever and will never be rare.
bysg_oneill ( 159032 ) writes:
Yeah we do the same in australia. Its fine. It was the 1980s when we did it, and I remember being a bit bummed out the 2c lollies wouldnt be a thing no more, but I figured I'm a teenager now and probably should be eating something more substantial than 2c lollies from the delicatesan. (although Im sure my mother was relieved, sweet things where banned in the house except for special occasions, but she couldnt control what me and my brother did outside the house)
byAmiMoJo ( 196126 ) writes:
In Ireland they often round prices and don't bother giving you change if it's only a few cents, or even tens of cents on a large purchase. It caught me out the first time.
Apparently the switch to using contactless payments more often has resulted in noticeable losses for shops that were previously keeping the change from your Euro.
byBert64 ( 520050 ) writes:
Or just calculate taxes in advance and display the full price including taxes on the shelf. You can easily adjust the price of the item so that once tax is added it comes out to a round figure.
Most countries do this, so the price you see is what you actually pay.
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byObliviousGnat ( 6346278 ) writes:
Vending machines also do this. In fact, they do it so well that you don't even realize you're paying taxes on your purchase.
byKoreantoast ( 527520 ) writes:
Problem is no merchant wants to be the first (and possibly only) one that integrates taxes, giving the perception that their prices are higher than their competitors. Even if they put in fine print that prices include taxes, people can't easily compare prices on the fly against competitors who don't (or straight up miss the fine print and just dismiss them as more expensive). I think your latter suggestion, that they make weird prices that round perfectly, is the more likely route unless a government entity
byswillden ( 191260 ) writes:
Yeah, it would probably take legislation forcing all of them to post and advertise prices including taxes. If everyone had to do it no retailer would be disadvantaged by being the first.
That said, I think it's a bad idea, unless retailers also have to itemize out the taxes on receipts so that consumers can see how much tax they're paying, which typically doesn't happen in Europe, as far as I've noticed (other than VAT, which is often itemized out on some purchases so that foreigners can get a VAT rebate)
byJoe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) writes:
gas prices have all taxes in them!
byCaptainAx ( 606247 ) writes:
Gas prices are usually X.XX9 which is yet another play into "it looks cheaper"
byhawk ( 1151 ) writes:
[cloudtrack, err, flare, verification? *REALLY*]
And of further interest, I've never seen one in the US that was a round number of cents--they all end in 9/10 of a cent. (although in years past, 4/10 was also common)
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byPleaseThink ( 8207110 ) writes:
Not everyone pays the same tax. Sometimes nonprofit organizations, charities, and churches are tax-exempt. I'm sure there's other cases too.
bydargaud ( 518470 ) writes:
Yes, and pros too. But those people can do the computation in reverse.
bybradley13 ( 1118935 ) writes:
Having lived with both systems, the US approach is just weird. You buy $10 of stuff, and the cashier demands...$10.70? Huh?
Of course, I do see the problem: different states, counties and towns in pose different tax rates. In countries with VAT this is not the case: VAT is determined at the state or national level.
byBert64 ( 520050 ) writes:
Retail stores don't float around, they know the taxes which are applicable to the location of each individual store.
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byaardvarkjoe ( 156801 ) writes:
...you realize that pennies don't solve that "problem," right? We already have to round the final total for virtually all purchases after calculating the tax.
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byJimWise ( 1804930 ) writes:
Do you really think that taxes currently magically make all final transactions come out to an even penny? It is just that cash registers, spreadsheets, etc dealing with such transactions are just set to round to the nearest cent. What is the tax on a $9.99 purchase using your example of an 8.75% tax rate? My calculator gives me a tax of $0.874125. That certainly does not look like an even penny value to me!
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byunrtst ( 777550 ) writes:
One reason I can think of is that different states and municipalities impose different rates of sales tax at the register. Multiplying a retail price by 8.75% may not always produce an even, round number.
That's already the case, even with the penny.
$9.99 * 0.0875 = $0.874125
Total cost is then: $10.864125
Can't make that change precisely using today's currency. Closest you can get is $10.86.
Get rid of the penny and that becomes $10.85 (or $10.90 if the rounding is evil). But I don't think they're actually getting rid of that denomination in the system. Paying with a credit card would likely still be $10.86.
IMO, one of the problems here is the quarter. If we got rid of the penny, nickle, and quarter, but keep the dime and 50c piece, then we simply removed a decimal place ($10.50, $10.60, $10.70, $10.80, ..). It'd be difficult to get rid of the nickle without getting rid of the dime as well, since those make change for the quarter, but I don't want to jump all the way to a quarter and then be stuck with such an odd denomination.
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byPascoea ( 968200 ) writes:
Get rid of the penny and that becomes $10.85 (or $10.90 if the rounding is evil).
I'll bet you a nickel which way the rounding will go.
bydryeo ( 100693 ) writes:
Here in Canada, when we got rid of the penny, some stores advertised that they would always round down. Didn't last before going to regular rounding and I've never heard of a business that always rounds up.
Can't remember if there is a law about it or just guidelines.
Anyways, few pay in cash today and for plastic, it is still rounded to the nearest cent.
bybatkiwi ( 137781 ) writes:
You have described how every other country getting rid of a 1c coin has done it.
if it ends in 3,4,5,6,7 it rounds to 5 cents. if it ends in 8,9,0,1,2 it rounds to 0 cents
byunrtst ( 777550 ) writes:
You have described how every other country getting rid of a 1c coin has done it.
if it ends in 3,4,5,6,7 it rounds to 5 cents. if it ends in 8,9,0,1,2 it rounds to 0 cents
Not disagreeing as I'm not going to bother looking them all up, but there are a LOT of ways to do rounding! Recently had to read up on "Round half to even"[^1] when `sprintf` was providing results I didn't expect (it does round half to even). For example:
$ for i in `seq 1 4`; do echo -n "$i.5 : "; printf "%0.0f\n" "$i.5"; done
1.5 : 2
2.5 : 2
3.5 : 4
4.5 : 4
That's also called "Banker's Rounding", so I have no faith that everyone everywhere will do it in the same sane way.
[^1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
byomnichad ( 1198475 ) writes:
If the total with tax on a dollar is $1.0875 now, they charge you $1.09 at the register. What difference does it really make if it becomes $1.10? You are overestimating the value of 1 penny and the few seconds of labor it takes to generate a wage of a penny.
byfahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) writes:
One reason I can think of is that different states and municipalities impose different rates of sales tax at the register. Multiplying a retail price by 8.75% may not always produce an even, round number.
The Treasury and trade/retail groups are looking at guidelines and/or legislation for a national standard on transaction rounding. The latter to protect themselves from potential state lawsuits from rounding short-changes (last paragraph below).
US Mint to strike last penny as Trump’s phaseout rattles retailers [politico.com]
The Treasury Department is considering issuing guidance to help businesses navigate the transition, including how to round cash transactions and handle payments without one-cent coins, according to people familiar with the plans.
But trade groups representing retailers, grocers, restaurants and gas stations are urging Congress to pass legislation establishing a national standard for rounding cash transactions to the nearest nickel.
Without such a policy, businesses are worried about potential class-action lawsuits under state consumer protection laws that could argue rounding shortchanges customers. Industry groups say a federal standard would create consistency and protect businesses from legal risk.
bybatkiwi ( 137781 ) writes:
They should just do what other countries have done:
If it ends in 3,4,5,6,7 it rounds to 5 cents. If it ends in 8,9,0,1,2 it rounds to 0 cents
byambrandt12 ( 6486220 ) writes:
Shouldn't that be 0 thru 4, round down, and 5-9, round up?
That's how I've always seen the rounding worked out.
byambrandt12 ( 6486220 ) writes:
So, this method is just straight round up, without round down?
So, why teach math the way I stated?
bywildstoo ( 835450 ) writes:
You're thinking only of rounding to 0. In this case the rounded increment can be 0 or 5. The system batkiwi suggests is the sensible way to do that.
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byJ. L. Tympanum ( 39265 ) writes:
But without nickles and dimes, how would we get nickle-and-dimed?
bynightflameauto ( 6607976 ) writes:
But without nickles and dimes, how would we get nickle-and-dimed?
Inflation dictates that nickel and diming is now dollar and five dollaring.
bydskoll ( 99328 ) writes:
We'd be drawn-and-quartered instead.
byTwistedGreen ( 80055 ) writes:
"Bend over and I'll show ya" -Clark W. Griswold
byomnichad ( 1198475 ) writes:
Certainly not at the five and dime store.
byfahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) writes:
But without nickles and dimes, how would we get nickle-and-dimed?
All transactions will be done using $Trumpcoin -- two birds, one scam - I mean, stone - and all that. :-)
bybjdevil66 ( 583941 ) writes:
The small penny came up in the mid-1850s, along with the elimination of the half-penny. (Both the large penny and half penny were coppers larger than today's penny.)
The nickel production costs are at least partially because of the harder metal (nickel). The U.S. Mint could consider a new "half dime" - the "deem", in coin parlance - and cut production costs again? It'd make more logical since again to have a 5 cent coin be smaller than the 10 cent dime, anyways - though their so damn small that some people w
byWaffle Iron ( 339739 ) writes:
So back then, prices were incremented by more than today's quarter.
People need to consider: Rounding to a nickle isn't going to be greater than 2 cents more inaccurate than rounding to pennies. Let's say you live in a backwater state, and still only make $7.25 per hour. Each transaction could potentially cost you at most 10 seconds of extra wages. However, transactions randomly round up and down, so the average error gets reduced by the square root of the number of transactions you make. Statistically speaking, you'll gain or lose only a couple of seconds of your time per
bysmooth wombat ( 796938 ) writes:
That only works for one item at most. Savvy shoppers would strategically buy combinations of items that always round down.
There is no such thing. Stores will adjust their prices to make sure they always round up.
This is inflation as prices will rise.
byWaffle Iron ( 339739 ) writes:
Show me the how you can create a system where the price totals of all possible combinations of inventory selections result in only (3 or 4) mod 5.
byYrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) writes:
And buying more than one item negates that store tactic.
This is a long solved problem. Round the final bill up or down to the nearest 5 or 0.
byFirethorn ( 177587 ) writes:
A good point, but thinking on the marginal transactional costs to process a sale of additional items after one, people deliberately buying two items to 'stick it' to the business and get maybe 5 cents off their purchase is actually benefitting the business, and the customer spending more time figuring out the exact cost before checking out than the five cents are worth.
Basically, I figure that the business could outright discount every item after the first by 5 cents, and still profit more per item when peo
byFirethorn ( 177587 ) writes:
I doubt that, especially with varying sales taxes screwing with things.
The draw to price everything in .99 is too high. Or even .95 or .97.
bybloggerhater ( 2439270 ) writes:
All this comment does is demonstrate the futility of scaling the value of any historic currency to modern standards. It's never accurate and dismisses important minutiae.
byZ00L00K ( 682162 ) writes:
You won't need anything less than 50 cents anyway.
Paper notes could be changed to coins too. It would make it less convenient for robbers.
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