[taitems]

Just as a point of interest, Australia removed the 1 and 2 cent coins from circulation back in 1992. Prices have been rounded to the nearest 5 cent value when paying with cash ever since. A comment on this thread said that it's madness, but it's all someone my age has grown up with.

[_frog]

As a fellow Australian the pennies aren't what I found most bizarre about US and Canadian currency, I more often found myself getting tripped up by the fact that listed prices in US and Canadian stores never include sales tax.

[cperciva]

When Canada introduced its federal Goods and Services Tax in the early 1990s, the government wanted to have it included in advertised prices; but under Canada's constitution the regulation of business advertising is a matter of provincial jurisdiction, and the provinces didn't want to play ball.

[DerekL]

Most stores in the US don't include sales tax in the listed price, but some do. Examples include vending machines, Starbucks and other coffee shops (but not usually locations inside book stores and supermarkets), and concession stands at concerts, sporting events, and fairs. They probably do it because they don't want to deal with pennies. Concession stands often go further and use whole dollar amounts, since the prices are high anyway.

IIRC, some post office vending machines will take pennies, because they can sell stamps one at a time.

[blahedo]

When I was in grad school there was a pizza-by-the-slice place where all prices were tax-included and an exact multiple of 25c. The only coins in their register were quarters. If you gave them any other coin, they counted it out and dumped it in a jar next to the register. A manager claimed that it was way more efficient and easy to count that way (and throughput mattered a lot during busy times). It also meant that a large percentage of the time the customers had exact change counted out before they even got to the register, which meant they didn't even need to make change and throughput increased further.

[maaku]

At least in the US, sales tax is assessed locally, so it can vary even within a particular region. Dealing with fixed prices and additional sales tax is the only reasonable way to run a business that crosses multiple localities.

[milanst]

What about gas prices? The displayed price is what you actually pay, it always includes all the taxes.

I guess the businesses are not required to do this for other products and naturally they choose to display the lower price, i.e. the one excluding taxes.

[maaku]

Gas prices vary from street to street. People expect that.

On the other hand, a cleaning product from target costs $2.99 (plus tax) no matter where I live.

[_delirium]

Yeah, for whatever reason most (all?) states have decided to specifically require that advertised gasoline prices include all taxes and fees, but haven't done the same for other products. Though there are some moves afoot to require it for mobile telephone contracts as well.

[flomo]

Probably because many people want to purchase exactly $X of gas.

[prawn]

We need to follow NZ's lead and ditch the five cent coin next. Even 10c pieces are a waste of time. Can't think of many cash transactions in my daily life where it would bother me to round to the nearest 20c. Certainly not dinner or a round of drinks, lunch, a full bag of groceries, etc.

[taitems]

There are several thousand, if not million of Australians that would disagree. The ability to round prices by ten or twenty cents at a time is a luxury that cannot be afforded by everyone.

[henrikschroder]

What? If you remove coins and round to the nearest payable amount, it evens out over time. Sometimes you'll pay less than the actual total, sometimes you'll pay more. Prices aren't magically going to increase, so how is this a luxury?

[gyardley]

If I ran a large business, I would certainly look at the most-common purchases and combinations of purchases (especially low-cost items, like a candy bar) and consider tweaking prices so I gained rather than lost two pennies on my most common transactions.

Places with limited and standardized menus, like fast-food restaurants, could do this quite easily.

Enough businesses do this, and things no longer even out over time.

[prawn]

To the point where the less-privileged suffer significantly? It's not as though rounding up a bit is going to be the only way businesses try to squeeze out more money.