Originally Posted by
nkedel
That part didn't make sense to me either, although the "sales tax added at the register rather than on the price advertised" norm here in the US is obnoxious.
(Don't need a VAT to fix it, as a minority of businesses that value quick transaction times over appearing to have lower prices, or which have captive customers, already post tax-inclusive prices...)
While I agree that it would be nice to have the price advertised is the price you pay, that would be an absolute nightmare since every jurisdiction has its own sales tax rate - there are thousands of different rates across the country. So if taxes were included in the advertised price, a company could never advertise that a product costs $X.YZ in a commercial or print ad since the cost of the product could be different in two stores across the street from each other if that street is the boundary line between two municipalities.
The argument could be made that at the very least, in-store advertising and price tags could be inclusive of sales tax, however people aren't going to be too happy when Apple advertises in their keynote that the newest iToy is $399 but the sign in the store says it's $437.28
The only way it could realistically work is if we got rid of all state and local sales taxes and went with one flat sales tax rate across the country like VAT. Good luck with that though.