[briandear]

Nope. I hate when website use IP for anything, especially language selection. I travel all the time as well as use VPNs for work, and the idea that my IP represents anything other than what network I’m connecting from is just lazy UX.

[alistairSH]

Yes let’s keep a shitty UX for most users because of a few abnormal users. Be honest, frequent travel and shopping over VPN is an edge case here. The vast majority of users are shopping and buying from home with a VPN.

Or better yet, give municipalities an incentive to stop layering a kinds of taxes. Just have a VAT and be done with it.

[kstrauser]

> The vast majority of users are shopping and buying from home with a VPN.

I bet that's wrong, and that a huge chunk of shopping is from cell phones that usually have an effectively random IP when they're not at their home location.

[alistairSH]

It would be interesting to see the numbers. I know for my wife and I, most shopping is done at home on phone or tablet and connected to our home wifi. And even shopping away from home is generally in the same county, so taxes are the same (or close enough for an up-front estimate).

[runako]

> Or better yet, give municipalities an incentive to stop layering a kinds of taxes. Just have a VAT and be done with it.

Switching our tax regime to VATs, effectively flattening 13,000+ sales tax jurisdictions down to 50, would be a monumental undertaking involving rethinking and reorganizing financing of literally everything below the federal level. And in the end it would solve a problem that is at best a minor annoyance to most Americans.

The juice ain't worth the squeeze.

[reaperducer]

Be honest, frequent travel and shopping over VPN is an edge case here.

Everyone is an edge case in some form. You, included.

Just have a VAT and be done with it.

This just illustrates that you don't understand the that taxes have multiple purposes, and why taxes are the way they are. Attend a few city council meetings.

[alistairSH]

I understand why we levy taxes. I’m not a moron (or a jerk). Other countries manage with a much simpler tax scheme; we can try and do the same.

[reaperducer]

America doesn't want to be like other countries. You may remember there was a war or two about that.

[ghaff]

Yeah, I see a lot of advice on here that websites should make some guesses and you can always correct them later if it turns out they're wrong.

That seems like terrible advice. Oh, the price is $X. And once you've entered all your info "just kidding." I'd much rather know there are some things not included up-front if they're not reasonably factored in.

[Symbiote]

Do you often order things for delivery at home while you're travelling? Then the price will change when you provide the delivery address — just like it does now.

Meanwhile, 99% of people will see the price they can expect to pay.