[Clubber]

This isn't sales tax, this is tariff. Not sure if they are any laws regarding that or not.

It might be like shipping and handling: $20. The shipping is probably $5, the handling is $15. The handling is just a fee they charge to sell it to you. They want you to think it's shipping that's why they put "shipping" first. Uber Eats calls it "taxes and other fees," which are mostly fees, but they want you to think it's taxes, that's why they put "taxes" first.

Many business are scummy like that, we've just gotten used to it.

The point being, they are signaling a price hike and they are trying to attribute it to tariffs, which maybe or may not be true down to the penny. If they were exact in what the tariff was, people can easily calculate their cost, which Amazon doesn't want. I'm sure they will sneak in some extra profit in there at some point using similar tactics as described above.

[indoordin0saur]

Even if they can get away with it I don't think this will work so well. So upon check out you're just getting a fee and sometimes it's egregiously high and sometimes it is nonexistent? If you're buying a $100 item (and let's say a $50 cost basis) that has three versions: US made, Japanese made and Chinese made you could get a $0 fee, a $5 or a $50 fee. And at the same time you know that retailers could be just completely making up the tariff fee because there is absolutely no regulation or accountability? Seems like a very fast way to completely lose the trust of your customers.

[Clubber]

>So upon check out you're just getting a fee and sometimes it's egregiously high and sometimes it is nonexistent? If you're buying a $100 item (and let's say a $50 cost basis) that has three versions: US made, Japanese made and Chinese made you could get a $0 fee, a $5 or a $50 fee.

It would be more obfuscated than that. They're scummy, I didn't say they weren't clever. A company probably wouldn't make the exact same product in three different countries and Amazon probably wouldn't stock all three, they'd just pick the version they could make the most money on. Also, they probably wouldn't make the difference obvious, just a few cents or dollars here or there. They would say the tariff is $5, when it really was $4.50 and they'd just round up. At scale that really ads up.

>Seems like a very fast way to completely lose the trust of your customers.

Most of them lost trust a long time ago. I mean, what companies do you trust? I don't trust very many, if any.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we should all trust Amazon...

Edit: Amazon said displaying tariffs was never approved and won't happen. More junk news.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/amazon-considers-displaying-...

[indoordin0saur]

I currently trust that when I add items to my shopping cart at a known retailer (either online or brick&mortar) the prices listed are the ones I'll see at checkout, plus some small deterministic sales tax and/or shipping fee.