US Tax-Excluded Pricing

What they’re getting at is not applying tax to the price is the standard consistent way to show price in the US. If you have a national ad campaign you wouldn’t be able to show the price with tax because every state and city has their own tax rate. So then, as a consumer, you’d have to guess if you’re looking at a national ad or regional that has tax applied. This also applies to products that have their price printed on the packaging for national distribution. Sure the price could have fine pri

Yes, it can be but sales tax is confusing in the US due to city tax, local tax (MTA in NYC, for example), county tax, state tax, etc. They are always changing too, amounts and types of items taxed. Your Big Mac costs 100s of different prices across the country. So its often easier and cheaper to just advertise the pre-tax amount (especially in national ads) and program the register to handle tax.But you are right, it is also preferred to hide some of the costs. But, sometimes you get a place

Why wouldn’t they? Major ones are electronic, and you know the areas you are putting up your ads in, so you include the tax in it. You go to the store, sales tax either included in the price, or written in smaller font with the tax included price.It actually happens in NA for specific industries as well! If you buy a flight from Google flights without making any additional purchases, you will get the sticker price because airfare display is regulated to a certain degree. Except in Japan and o

Thanks. American logic is weird in so many ways. Publishing a price without including tax to consumers is forbidden here since it's misleading.

(Completely off-topic here, but my understanding is that sales tax in the US can vary from county to county, and definitely varies from state to state, so it's simpler in the case of labelling, and impossible in the case of national advertising, to show the final price. Contrast with Europe where sales tax is nationally fixed, which makes it easy to show the final price. (and in some places illegal not to!))

Isn't it misleading to mention sales tax in the inclusion? You're always going to pay for it anyway, right (I am not from USA)? Why not simply either avoid mentioning it in the comparison, or add it everywhere (which is a long term fix).

Including the tax in the price somewhat conceals the tax rate.

How does that work with sales tax not being included in the displayed price?

It's common in USA, because there are different sales taxes in different states. So advertised products are advertised without tax included in the price.

This would be consistent with US practice of displaying price always excluding tax.