The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

As the article points out, there are laws that say people who pay via SNAP debit cards "cannot be charged more than others".

If cash payments are rounded down, but debit card payments aren't, they are in violation of state law.

The article also points out that rollback of pennies in Canada and other places were planned, addressing these kinds of issues. USA is doing it with no such planning.

Can you not argue that the average is the same and thus the law isn’t violated?

Does the law say the average price must be the same, or does it say the price must be the same?

Reality: the supermarket does it the common sense way, and never gets sued, but if they do get sued, the outcome is "you must now refund 2 cents from every SNAP transaction you ever did"

Very unlikely that would happen. The way similar issues have been dealt with in the past is that settlement is negotiated to something "reasonable" (at least arguably so) and administrable. Probably the settlement amount would just go to a fund that the state would then distribute according to its priorities.

So, round down debit cards too? This seems like a really easy problem to solve.

No, because the law applies to individual transactions, not averages.

SNAP is a major source of revenue for grocers so it seems like you wouldn't have to prod them very hard to do that.

They're all easily solvable problems. The issue, as GP mentioned, is that the pennies are just stopping without the thought through these problems and planning for the solutions. This was done via a social media post, not a well thought out transition like Canada had.

The article also points out that some states and a lot cities require retailers to provide exact change. Congress would need to pass legislation to allow rounding nationally. I'm guessing in the meantime they'll continue holding pennies from previous years?

If the national government literally stops creating a certain precision of money, i expect the "exact change" requirement should be invalid.

> The issue, as GP mentioned, is that the pennies are just stopping without the thought through these problems and planning for the solutions.

That's not an "issue". That's the way things that actually happen, happen.

> there are laws that say

Hmm, maybe this is why it should be handled by Congress and not at the whim of the executive. They can handle all this in one piece of legislation.

You volunteering your business to be the the test legal case for that? Or are you stocking pennies?

“change will be provided via Venmo” sign at the entrance :)

If they're easily solvable then why do you need planning?

Changing the currency on a whim by executive fiat is stupid, but that's just principle. In practical terms, I really have a hard time caring about the problems this specific change creates.

More annoying especially during the SNAP gap due to the shutdown the law forbids differential pricing in general so shops couldn't offer lower prices for EBT/SNAP customers as a way to help their neighbors.

I don't want to be glib, but hey what the hey. This is how you can see that the United States is in decline; it can no longer discontinue a coin through legislation.

Is gas sold as a whole penny amounts in those locations? Where I am it's always something and 9/10ths of a cent.

Here in Argentina the law says they must be rounded down. Initially it was for 5 AR$cents, and some shops still has the oficial sign that says AR$ 0.05.

We unofficially drop the coins/bills when the reach ~US$0.03, so now we dropped the AR$50 bills and everythig in cash is rounded down to AR$100 (US$0.07).

(The only exception is the photocopy shop 2 blocks away from home.)

Credit cards are charged the exact ammount, with cents that are irrelevant.

Allowing gas stations to denominate their prices by the 10th of a cent has always struck me as a just an underhanded and extreme way to practice the "9.99" retail psychological trick. Why not allow retailers to price things 9.99999? Ridiculous.

Generally in accounting, insignificant amounts are... insignificant (like how tax calculations are rounded to the dollar).

Please don't strawman this, there is ample evidence for rounding pennies on everyday transactions.

The amount is only rounded at the end of the transaction. Those fractions make a difference if you're buying more than a few gallons

It's because technically the dollar is divided into Dimes, Cents, and Mil. (this is why dimes say 'One Dime' on them instead of 'Ten Cents'.

So while the mil isn't really used anywhere else that regular people see any more due to inflation, it is a valid division of the dollar and that's why they are able to get away with it.

of course 9.99...(repeating) is mathematically 10, so I have a hard time being against allowing that.

Charges take into account severity of the crime and intent. Nobody is going to get criminal charges for rounding pennies on cash transactions.

If the law is slow to change or there are no available pennies, the stores can adjust the prices to match the expected rounding of prices. I can't imagine someone being prosecuted from rounding a penny but it's a quick and easy way to avoid any doubt.

It's probably the case that the real risk is being suspended from SNAP for failing to comply with their rules.

> I can't imagine someone being prosecuted from rounding a penny

Under this executive, I wouldn't be so sure. If a grocery chain starts deviating from the law, then the government can use it against them to further a political agenda like we've seen with Eric Adams for example.

Sure, on paper. In reality bored fedcops trying to justify their budgets is how you get plenty of unjustifiable suffering.

The secret service probably won't cause a Waco out of it, but I'm sure they'll do something dumb.

The easy thing for stores to do then seems to be apply the cash rounding to EBT and card transactions.

Ok— Walmart decides to do something the government doesn’t like re:tariffs or whatnot. They can either plead fealty and retract their decision or the C-Suite can defend themselves against conspiracy to commit a zillion misdemeanors an hour…

So do whatever they do with mils but for the penny too. They don’t nor have they ever minted a mil coin, so the procedure for this is already well established if this is correct.

> If they're easily solvable then why do you need planning?

Easily solvable problems still need coordination. Do you want to go to one store and have your change rounded up then go to another and have it rounded down?

Congress seems like the most dysfunctional branch of government going on a couple decades now.

They poll worse than the most unpopular presidents

Turns out the station charges you a round number of cents per gallon. Then there are federal taxes, which are, IIRC, 24.5 cents per gallon. And then there's state tax, which varies from state to state but seems to always be x.4 cents per gallon.

So I don't think it's just "evil retailer tricks".

Sure, who cares? This could already be happening today with rounding fractional pennies. I have no clue if stores round up, or down, or split at .5, or what. But obviously they're doing something, since there aren't physical fractional pennies and my card statements never show more than two decimal digits, so it's not a new problem. This would make the problem five times worse, but five times insignificant is still not something I'm going to worry about.

Has a Mil ever been minted?

So, implement sales tax like Europe does VAT and include it in on the shelf price, and make sure all shelf prices end in 0 or 5. Then, adding up items in a cart will also end in 0 or 5, and the tax is already included, so there is no math beyond the addition that could change the total to anything ending in something that is not 0 or 5. No matter how people pay, cash or card, the price will be the same, and it will always end in 0 or 5. As an added bonus, customers don't have to wonder how much tax they'll pay, because that's already included in the price.