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460 points andrewl | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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Amorymeltzer ◴[] No.45903482[source]
Some interesting complications with rounding I had not heard about before were mentioned here, worth noting I think, especially given the prominence of SNAP in the news lately:

>Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS).

>In addition, the law covering the federal food assistance program known as SNAP requires that recipients not be charged more than other customers. Since SNAP recipients use a debit card that’s charged the precise amount, if merchants round down prices for cash purchases, they could be opening themselves to legal problems and fines, said Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for NACS.

>“Rounding down on all transactions presents several challenges beyond the loss of an average of 2 cents per transaction,” Lenard said. “We desperately need legislation that allows rounding so retailers can make change for these customers.”

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nofriend ◴[] No.45903663[source]
just make the price a multiple of five cents
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mattnewton ◴[] No.45903695[source]
State and local taxes make this infeasible
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hollasch ◴[] No.45903884[source]
It's just American custom to exclude some taxes from the posted price. Many countries include all taxes in the price, something I've always wished we would do in America. After that, I'd love to see the elimination of the custom of always ending fuel cost per gallon in 9/10 of a cent.
replies(2): >>45904164 #>>45908017 #
smallerize ◴[] No.45904164[source]
Rounding sales tax on each item will often result in a different price than rounding once for the total. The store will collect the wrong amount of tax that way.
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1. rtkwe ◴[] No.45906470[source]
They're saying include the sales tax in the price and set the item's price such that the sum of price + all taxes is an even increment of 5 cents. Gets a little tricky with fractional sales taxes but that's only a problem where POS systems strictly enforce 2 digit cents (not sure if that's the case).