[db48x]

It depends on the locality. The city, county, and state may all impose taxes. In particular, cities sometimes opt to generate revenue by taxing specific services, such as cable TV. So a resident in City X pays $5 per month extra for cable TV, while someone in City Y pays $7.44 extra. Both of these cities allow just a single cable operator, and require that operator to collect the tax and remit it to them. But if you have satellite TV then you don’t pay the tax. And maybe City Y never updated the law to apply the tax to cable internet service, but City X did. So someone living in City X pays $5 per month if they have both cable TV and internet service (or either one alone), while someone in City Y only pays the tax if they have TV service. If all they have is internet service, then they pay nothing extra.

And if the service includes telephone service, then there will be a Federal Universal Service Fee, which pays for reduced–cost land–line telephone service for the poor. It’s like $0.11 per month per telephone line, IIRC.

The average customer might see two or three of these things on their bill. But it’s not uncommon to see a dozen either.

So it definitely depends on where the subscriber wants the service, and what service or services they subscribe to. None of this is really all that difficult to figure out, and these companies have already automated it. They are just complaining because they will have to raise their advertised prices, which naturally will lead to reduced sales. Currently they just lie through their teeth about their prices, and count on people being too lazy to cancel their service once they see the first month’s bill.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

Interesting, for context in Australia almost all goods and services that aren’t billed based on usage must clearly outline total cost - if you order something you can expect the marked price to match the reciept (unless the receipt is less, common in retail discount offers)

We also don’t have tipping culture, you can tip, but it’s not an expectation. Though, the latter is slowly creeping in.

[db48x]

Yes, I understand that. In fact I would like to see us move in that direction. I think these new rules are definitely a step in the right direction.

However, put yourself in the position of someone selling internet service in the whole country of Australia. If you put out a television ad that will be seen by everybody, then you either cannot quote a price because every viewer could end up paying different taxes, or you must quote a price but put a footnote that mentions local taxes, or some other dodge. The new rules actually cover this case as well. In any situation where they show a generic price not including local taxes or other fees, the ISP must instead direct the consumer to a source that gives them a correct customized price (presumably a web page). They must also document the event, which is something else the ISPs are objecting to. I don’t know enough about it to say if that would be a good thing or not.

It’s the same with sales taxes too, btw. Every town and county has their own sales taxes, so advertised prices never include them. At least in that case each store will only ever need to charge a small number of tax rates so in principle it would be easy enough for the stores to print price tags that show how much tax would be collected for each item. Still, it was historically easier to leave the tax information off of the price tags and rely on the customer to simply remember the local sales tax rate (usually between 2% and 10%, except on tax–exempt products) so that’s what we still do.

On the other hand, gas prices always include the taxes. Historically gas taxes have had a much higher percentage rate (because they are taxed a fixed number of cents per gallon, rather than as a percentage of the price), so maybe gas stations just didn’t want customers to argue with the clerks.