[timeinput]

Imagine a world where they just posted the price you would pay at the register on the shelf instead of some number that is ~93.082% of the price you would pay.

I know it's hard to imagine the price on the shelf being the price that you pay, but I believe it is possible even in complex tax situations.

[ianferrel]

I live where there is no sales tax, so it's not hard to imagine!

But good luck convincing every state, county, municipality, and other weird governing body that requires something other than that and also collects a weird sales tax.

Or go with the solution that papers over all that nonsense: a flexible and maximum $0.04 per purchase discount.

[timeinput]

I mean it's not on the state, county, municipality, or weird governing body to put the prices on the shelf at the store. Nation wide advertising might be different (is that still a thing? There were always asterisks that made a dollar menu not always a dollar anyway), but the literal price on the shelf / menu / ... at any given physical building could price things appropriately for the physical location that they are on.

I live in a place with a fixed VAT (that is included in the price on the shelf / menu / ...), but grew up in the US in several different weirdly taxed localities. It's just such a silly argument to say "we can't write the correct price on the shelf because the laws vary." The register knows the correct price, the labels on the shelf are computer generated, and updated regularly. The labels at many nation wide fast food type places are displays anyway.

If Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau can make it work I feel like it's at least imaginable that stores that already automate this weird complex tax code could print accurate labels instead of inaccurate labels, with an accurate calculation at sales time.

[gblargg]

What if businesses issues their own penny coupons that could be used in future purchases? If you bought from there regularly you'd on average only have a couple of them.

[ianferrel]

This is what happens when you wish on a monkey's paw to get rid of pennies.