They changed the law in Sweden several years ago with great fanfare to make tip included in the total price at all restaurants. It didn't take many months until an additional tip was universally expected. So now you tip twice!

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.

If two stores are that close to each other, then competitive forces will ensure that they charge the same total price. The store will keep a different amount of the price depending on the tax rate, but the total price charged to the customer will be the same.

Or for the very small differences in sales tax between municipalities/counties within a state, you just eat the extra 1/2% in tax in the high-tax municipalities or take the extra 1/2% in tax in profit in the low-tax municipalities.

With a few exceptions (NH/OR communities bordering on MA/WA), in general you don't get cases where you have a single decently-large advertising market where there are huge gaps in sales tax rates, and in those cases, there's already a lot of sales/use tax avoidance going on (do recall that in most states, you are supposed to pay use tax on goods purchased out-of-state.)

People would get used to it pretty quickly, given that they already get the same increased price at the register...

Moreover, given that we're talking about tipping, I was thinking primarily about restaurant menu prices where there's little advertising of menu prices outside of (A) fast food, and (B) special promotion items.

Otherwise, prices vary highly between individual stores in a chain, and where there is a fixed promotional price chain-wide there's already often a decoupling of that to local costs (although some high-cost areas, it's a "$1.29 menu" or similar, rather than a dollar menu at osme fast food joints.)

For retail would be pretty easy also to still display the pretax price, just require the after tax be more prominent:
(also, where is the sales tax 9.6%? The highest rates I'm aware of are in Chicago, at 9.5%, and a two smaller CA cities in LA County -- Pico Rivera, and South Gate -- have a whopping 9.75%.)

Hardly; it just limits the degree to which advertisers can usefully give an exact price in national advertising. Expect $399 to become "around $400" or similar weaseling if they did it.

That's the easiest way to get around it. But still, it's kind of a lie - saying you'll do something and then not doing it. Granted, it's a little lie in the grand scheme of things, but still not comfortable. And you have to tell the server directly to his/her face (although, if service is really bad, I usually don't have a problem telling them).

Hang on, the new iJunk is out already?! Where do I get one?! How long is the line?! I don't care what it does or how much it costs, I want it!!! Heck, I'll even tip the salesguy!

Mike

FlyerTalk Forums > OMNI > OMNI > Anyone else hate Apple?

I've never been harrassed for a tip, but I was pretty appalled at seeing a tip cup taped to the drive-thru window at Arby's once. Thankfully, it was gone the next time I went through there.

It would be irony if some patron had stolen it while out on a late night snack run.

In San Francisco the minimum wage is now $10.50. Should this effect the amount of tip you give?

Seriously? Okay, I'm not a big supporter of wage rate increases, and I've never lived in the US, but I know the cost of living in SFO is extraordinary.

The average monthly price of an apartment lease in San Francisco is $2,734.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2012...#ixzz2GnNyjB3I

That's 65 hours, per week, of minimum wage, without adding in tax.

There are good reasons not to tip well, and this is not one of them.

There are far too many factors to consider if you want to tip a "fair" amount. As Jerry mentioned above, the cost of living in San Francisco is much higher. Of course, that is assuming that the waiter lives in the city rather than commuting in from elsewhere.

Then you have the fact that restaurants (as with most things) in San Francisco tend to be more expensive than elsewhere, so even if you keep the percentage the same, the tip will be higher.

Finally, remember that the city provides subsidized health insurance for minimum wage workers.

There is really no way of determining a fair tip based on all these factors. I wouldn't try to adjust tips accordingly, because you really have no way of knowing the specifics.

This is 100% correct, surprised the poster not only didn't pick this up but voluntarily wanted to tell the story...

Yes we already know you can stiff the servers if you want.

I'm sure there's a good reason, I'm guessing a sizable portion of visitors are unaware otherwise they wouldn't bother..

Well not really,

If you got taxed on 12% at your tax rate of 20% then you would only cost money to the waiter if you tipped less than 2.5%.