This shouldn't be controversial. FTC isn't banning these fees, it is only requiring merchants to disclose the fees. Why would anyone be against that?
Another good rule is click-to-cancel. Just a couple of days ago I logged into my Dish Network account to cancel it (after they hiked prices). There is no way to cancel online. There is no way to cancel via chat. You have to call. As soon as you call you're told the wait time is over 45 minutes. There is no call back option. Why should a consumer have to be on the phone for 45 minutes to cancel? (Typically they will drop the call after 45 minutes and you have to call again.) If you call Dish to sign up service the wait time is 0 minutes: they answer immediately. If you then tell that you're actually calling to cancel, they forward you to the cancellation number with the wait. This is an abusive business practice, and banning it should not be controversial.
Years ago when signed up with them I opted to pay the extra service for local tv channels, which required an andditional antenna to install.
For some reason the installer couldnât fit it securely on our house, and said to call Dish to remove the service since we cannot receive it.
Dish refused to remove the local service! They said since we signed a contract we were stuck paying for it even though they couldnât fit the antenna.
I pointed out in a hundred different ways that the contract also required them to provide a service which they are not providing so we shouldnât have to pay.
All of my attempts to reason with them were ignored, and their call staff refused to escalate to their manager.
Long story short we had to pay for twelve months for something they couldnât provide to us.
Literally the minute the contract was up we cancelled (it was easier to cancel back then).
So now likely hundreds (or more) of individuals have to not only wait on hold forever, but have to learn the process of and actually go through with filing a small claim? That there is recourse is beside the point when it is mired in bureaucracy (not to mention taking days off to show up to court, etc).
I'm surprised I haven't yet heard of companies who would handle this for you, like there are e.g. for handling the process of getting compensation when an airline screws up scheduling or loses baggage, etc. I'm guessing there isn't enough money to be won there for them to be able to survive off a percentage of it.
Customers should be able to bill them for wasted time. If you are calling to cancel you can bill an hourly rate. Make it some multiple of minimum wage. Then services will pop up to have someone call and cancel for you, then bill the company for that time. Zero effort on the consumer side and suddenly wait times will drop. The problem is that there is no incentive on the company side to have easy cancellation or any other "negative" customer service. If they get billed a hundred dollars for keeping you on the line for 2 hours they will suddenly care a lot.
There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything.
Ironically, that inherent dysfunction is the main reason to suspect that won't happen. But politically, every regulation as automatically partisan, even when it has overwhelming support.
> There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything.
(At least some of) the agencies brought this on themselves with their abuse of the goodwill/benefit of the doubt previously afforded to them. Most flagrant has been the ATF, for one example constantly redefining machine guns or pistol braces, turning millions of citizens into felons with no oversight beyond drawn out and expensive court cases against them.
I never liked the smell of this power being afforded to agencies in the abstract, even for the "good guys" at the CDC or Department of the Interior. It's too rife for abuse. Federal regulations (whether you call it a law or a rule, the party van is coming if you break them) are supposed to be hard to pass. We once needed an amendment to ban alcohol before we forgot the definitions of interstate and commerce, but if my understanding is correct, under Chevron deference the DEA could have decided to schedule it without even asking congress.
Your understanding is not correct. Chevron deference never meant agencies can just make up and pass law; it was a legal doctrine which merely stated that in places where the law is ambiguous (say a law declares water must be clean of pollutants, or bans pistol braces) that courts should look at any guidance from relevant agencies for guidance, since supposedly they should know more about the subject than the courts. It never allowed agencies to circumvent congress or prevented congress from further clarifying law. For example, the DEA doesnât have the power to schedule drugs due to chevron, Congress includes provisions for the AG to reschedule drugs, which the AG historically has delegated to the DEA, the point being this was a power explicitly granted by congress.
While it may sound nice to you right now that the Supreme Court did away with chevron due to your gripes with the ATF, now the definitions of machine guns or pistols or anything else are up to the whims of any judge in any jurisdiction, which could be better or, given that judges likely have even less knowledge of the subject than the ATF, probably worse and more inconsistent.
> Chevron deference never meant agencies can just make up and pass law
Not on it's own, no. The bigger culprit there is the erosion of the nondelegation doctrine. But Chevron aggravated the problem by allowing agencies to stretch their authority beyond what even congress intended with little possibility of legal challenge.
Interpreting the law is and should be the role of the courts, not the role of the agencies that that law is supposed to be governing. It'd be like if we passed a law intended to regulate insurance companies, and the courts decided to give deference to the insurance company's interpretation of that law because "they're the experts on insurance".
This is coming into my work life with web accessibility: The DoJ published a rulemaking in April that filled the many, many gaps in the existing law that determines if the government is violating the ADA when creating websites, etc.
What came before this was at least 15 years of tort action, a patchwork of civil rulings across a wide variety of jurisdictions, and generally, confusion and ambiguity. Not the stuff of efficient government.
From my perspective, this rulemaking is pretty close to ideal. I did not dream of getting such a clear, detailed direction from a federal agency. I think my jaw may have literally dropped as I read through it. I think the web accessibility is an interesting example, because it's not a bloated bureaucracy harassing some fishermen, it's an agency trying to prevent the government from violating your civil rights.
So, is the idea that Congress would have accomplished this instead? I just can't imagine that happening.
yeah because Congress now have to become experts at everything: from definition of machine guns, to ADA guidelines. Afterall, if Congress didn't specifically pass the law to the detail, it doesn't exist.
The sheer stupidity of that argument is mind-blowing. When you have a government agency with dedicated technical resources, but you will rather a bunch of couple hundred of people with different backgrounds make specific rules about everything. That's just madness
That's because it's not actually intended to make the regulations better. It's intended to make it impossible for regulatory agencies to do their jobs effectively, without outright legislating them out of existence, because the people backing it believe that without effective regulation they and their allies will be more easily able to enrich themselves at the public's expense.
It's because that is the constraints that the U.S. Constitution places on our form of Federal government. The Congress passes laws (and controls the money), the Executive implements the law, and the Courts interpret the law. My lay understanding is that Chevron shifted too much power from the Congress and the Courts to the administrative agencies in the Executive branch. It seemed like a "good idea" at the time but over time the abuses became apparent and this Supreme Court reigned it back in towards the balance of powers required by the Constitution.
If congress says "companies can't pollute and the EPA determines what is a pollutant" then the EPA is implementing a law congress passed. That's not against any constitutional constraints.
The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it.
That being said, bump stocks are a simple enough concept that banning them is stupid. We should quite our obsession over machine guns--there are few situations where it even matters.
The problem with it going through congress is that it will always be political rather than scientific. The agencies don't do a good job, but a lot of that is because of garbage they are saddled with by congress (think of the machine guns--the basic problem is that the legal and practical definitions are out of sync) and a lot of it is because politics manages to get in anyway.
How about a middle ground: agencies can make rules but they must give their reasoning and supporting evidence--and anyone can challenge such in court. You can't go after the ruling but if you can knock out it's supports it goes away. This would cut both ways--exempt something from a more general ruling and the reason for the exemption can be challenged. (And I'd like to see the same thing for laws.)
> The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it.
The part where it breaks down is pointing at a specific piece that enables automatic fire and calling that piece a "machine gun", even if it's just a tiny piece of metal or a specially-tied shoelace.
If it carries the "machine gun" ability with it, it's like ... The Enchanted Seer of Automatic Firing.
It turns a 'plain gun' into a machine gun, and there are almost no other ways to do that. So it seems like calling it "a machine gun" is reasonable from linguistic perspective. #wittgenstein
The seers have been banned. I don't think anyone thinks they're not machine gun parts.
What's been going on is the ATF has been going after a variety of methods of circumventing the concept--means of using the recoil to "pull" the trigger without the operator actually pulling it. The result sure acts like a machine gun, albeit an unreliable and inaccurate one. The problem is that it's simply too easy to do, they are fighting a hopeless battle.
My understanding is the same problem applies to silencers--plenty of filters out there that just happen to be of the right size to function as silencers. And there isn't even any reason for the rules against silencers. They aren't like Hollywood, it's still loud but below the threshold of hearing damage.
I think the machine gun issue is mostly settled. But there is a lot of controversy lately about what is a short barreled rifle (which requires a special federal permit). I don't know the specifics but the laws have been changed after people purchased their guns, such that if they were caught with them they would be in violation of serious gun laws (essentially as serious as having a machine gun without a permit)
"constantly redefining machine guns or pistol braces"
Pistol braces was struck down not on second amendment grounds, but because the ATF failed to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act, specifically failing the logical outgrowth test. They proffered a comment period and then did a switch when publishing the final rule.
Similar shenanigans were afoot with the Trump area bump stock ban, which was ruled against by the Supreme Court itself in Garland v. Cargill. I think that had to do with the agency exceeding its authority beyond what the statute specifically specifies. In laymans terms, the legal details were not ambiguous enough to justify the conclusion that the agency came to stretching the statute through their interpretation.
Who is behind this move? What individuals, and what politicians? By what legal means is this happening? I've literally never heard of anything like this before - without further details, this is just political flame-baiting.
> Who is behind this move? What individuals, and what politicians? By what legal means is this happening?
The supreme court. The removal of Chevron Deference this year means that the courts have given themselves huge amounts of power over any administrative decision that isn't specifically regulated by congress (rather than the prior stance which was to presume that agency decisions were reasonable interpretations of the legislation unless there was clear evidence to the contrary).
Yes. Previously the court had to prove that something an agency did went against the mandate congress gave it, to strike it down. Now it can just strike it down for no reason. This is useful in times when republicans control the courts and democrats control the executive.
There was an argument about noncompetes and the FTC in front of a Federal judge recently.
The judge said, "Even as the agency has the power, I don't feel sufficiently convinced by their argument and will block it anyway."
That doesn't sound like they have as much power in their delegated responsibilities if an arbitrary judge says "... and you also have to convince me personally, even though you're entitled to do it."
You shouldn't assume others are acting in bad faith when the much more likely explanation is you're just not paying attention.
Three major developments from the courts in this direction have been:
- The overturning of Chevron gave courts the power to interpret portions of laws written by subject matter experts, instead of those experts themselves.
- The big questions doctrine has allowed the courts to decide when the legislature has deligated too much power.
- Cornerpost has removed the statue of limitations for challenge policies and rules out in place by agencies.
These together clearly paint a picture. Any policy can be challenged (in any venue, allowing the plaintiff to pick their venue). This allows policies in place for decades to be challenged and brought to the supreme court. The most recent court has adopted the major questions doctrine, allowing them to strike down any policy they feel pertain to "issues of major political or economic significance." (no they didn't define it more than that). Or, if they can't make that argument, they can interpret the law to strike down the policy due to the overturning of Chevron.
We've seen an unprecedented shift of power to the supreme court in the last few years. They're using the disfunction in the legislature as an opening to gain power. Which is scary considering it's a group of 9 unelected people with lifetime appointments.
The Romanian supreme court just decided to block the presidential elections. They might have had reasons, but they definitely didn't have the mandate, yet they decided it nevertheless and because they are supreme nobody can challenge them. I'm sure the US supreme court (and more) is warming up to this concept.
Article I, section 1 of the Constitution: âAll legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.â
It doesnât say, âCongress may delegate its legislative Powers to the Executive.â Arguably, the âshallâ language forbids that! Article I, section 8 does give the Congress the authority to pass laws necessary and proper to execute its regulation of interstate commerce (among other things), but ⌠itâs not necessary to delegate legislative power in order to execute the law.
>There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything.
It's hard to argue with this in principal. The rules as law BS has been a band-aid over dysfunction. It needs to go. It'll hurt in the short term but should be more sustainable in the long term. That people will get more angry at congress for doing nothing is icing on the cake.
> That people will get more angry at congress for doing nothing is icing on the cake.
I want to be optimistic about this. In practice it seems that the strategy created by McConnel to block any legislation at all has been doing/tricking the voter really well. As he predicted, credit for anything good goes to the current admin while anything bad also gets blamed on the current admin. I can see a likely scenario where "people getting more angry" will only make this strategy to block everything work even better. I hope I am wrong and the "nuance" that congress exists and isn't controlled by the president will finally get into people heads. I also hope that once it gets into their heads, the conclusion won't be that a authoritarian dictator is needed.
I agree with you: frustrated by a Congress that canât pass any legislation, the one thing it doesnât seem like anyone is willing to try is to consider compromises. Everyone seems fully convinced that if only the 50% (or more) of the voters who disagree with them would just drop dead, we could fix everything. And as a result, voters punish lawmakers, who horse trade and negotiate. Even though thatâs the only way things used to get done until everything broke 10 or 15 years ago.
It's very easy to argue against when the people that most want to violate the rules have congress in their back pocket. I personally prefer being actually able to breathe the air and not work 70 hours a week with no benefits.
Dish is terrible. After my mom passed away, they were one of the few things that my Dad had trouble cancelling. Even with a copy of her death certificate, my Dad could not get the service cancelled. He just ended up throwing the bills (and their equipment) away.
I think they went bankrupt, so hope that's some consolation. I heard that an attempt to buy them by DTV got rejected on antitrust. But in the article it said they went bust
Yup, same experience here 3 months trying to make them understand "he is dead".
We left their crap in a room for ~6 months total at the advise of his estate lawyer. Eventually they did accept that he was dead and canceled the account as well as sent a box to send the equipment back.
They got their equipment back after it had all had an unexpected encounter with a hammer. Never heard a peep about it.
Here in Sweden, if the amount isn't clearly presented, there's no agreement to pay the specified amount, so there's no contract and no obligation to pay-- an agreement becomes binding because of the reasonable expectation of a party on the counterparty.
I don't understand American contract law, since I even see ideas like changing agreements, which are completely contrary to the very notion of a contracts as I understand it, so it's nice that something is done about these strange practices.
I don't understand how it's come to this point though. That courts have been willing to tolerate things that aren't in the contract (i.e. changes to contracts), provisions that aren't clear, etc., and complex and strange provisions even in contracts of adhesion and things presented to consumers.
Mostly it comes down to the fees being presented at the end rather than at the beginning. You have to follow the process through to the end to figure out what it would cost which makes price comparisons much harder.
Occasionally this is unavoidable--shipping charges. If they simply pass through what UPS charges, fine. Otherwise, they should be listed up front.
Agree to both. And both are incredibly easy problems to solve. For the first just have a law that says:
> Any advertised price must include all mandatory taxes and fees. No exceptions.
For the second just have a law that says:
> An end user must be allowed to use the same method to cancel as they used to sign up for the service. No exceptions. Additionally, an end user cannot be required to perform more manual actions to cancel than was required to sign up. No exceptions.
No one should be against this except greedy corporations. Easily solved, common sense rules that already have working examples in the real world. 1 is already the law in Netherlands and Australia and these countries arenât falling over from the undue burden placed on businesses.
Iâll end with: two cornerstones of a free market are price transparency and the ability/mobility to switch services when a better competing offering emerges. Not having legislation like above to protect those values is anti capitalistic
Fee for paying by cash: $1000
Fee for paying by check: $1100
Fee for paying by credit card: $1050
Fee for middle seat: $200
Fee for window seat: $300
Fee for aisle seat: $250
Note that no fee on this list is mandatory because you always have other options.
To me that is totally fine. If there are electives, then elective them. Fix the mandatory ones first. Like the âresort feeâ hotels charge. Or âcleaning feesâ.
It becomes trickier when the fee is elective, but a significant part of the advertisement. Southwest Airlines complaining about having to advertise their fares, which come with two bags included, alongside other airlines who donât include any bags comes to mind. I think there is probably some world where elective fees are included as well though this seems more nebulous.
However, letâs not let the perfect be the enemy of the good: Even just including everything that is compulsory in the base price itself, including taxes, would be a massive improvement to the status quo. Fixing this elective fee ambiguity would be a next step
The (hypothetical) airfare was listed as "free", but it was impossible to end up paying less than $1200 for it.
The point being that even if you have a choice between several fees (making none of them "mandatory" by a narrow reading), you're still paying something beyond the advertised base price.
The logical good-faith rule in a case like this would be that you must advertise at least the minimum price anyone would end up paying based on the available "fee choices".
I'd go a little farther and say that if there are impractical scenarios to avoid the fee it still must be included. (Say, no fee if you pay the fare in Timbuktu.) Advertise it based on the 95th percentile of what actually happens.
So what happens when you buy that ticket and don't pay any of the fees? If you get taken to Hawaii then they're in the clear. If they won't take you without you paying the fee then I guess the fee wasn't optional after all.
A certain portion of the population is pro-profit at virtually any cost.
It might seem like Dish employees wake up every day and say, "What can we do today to screw our customers even more?" But usually they're just trying to find ways to make more money.
Dish knows their satellite TV business is on the way out. Their strategy is to maximize the present value of that business by retaining and squeezing as many of those customers as much as possible, slowing the decline and pulling as much money out of that vertical for as long as they still have it, so that they can reinvest that cash into new verticals with more promise.
The ironic part of all of this, I would have pay linear TV services if it was cheaper - 50 bucks a month for the whole house, and I suspect they could have 30%+ more customers.
It doesn't solve the problem that "the line must constantly go up". A steady revenue and constant returns isn't good enough, apparently and in the case of dish, it will be declining revenue over time no matter what they do.
> A certain portion of the population is pro-profit at virtually any cost.
This is a mischaracterization of the criticism.
Suppose we all agree that Dish sucks and making it hard to cancel is malicious. A rule is proposed to require customers to be able to cancel any subscription on the vendor's website. Is that a completely reasonable rule that will have no negative consequences?
A lot of small businesses don't even have a website, or if they do it's fully static content that just provides information about their offering and if you want it you call them. Some two-person landscaping service doesn't have an IT department to implement this and having to call them to cancel isn't a real problem because they actually answer their phone.
And if this was only one rule they would just suck it up and pay someone a thousand bucks to make them a website where you can cancel, but it's not. So when you propose yet another piece of red tape they have to take food off their table to make go away, they line up with rotten tomatoes, and anyone proposing to pare some of it back gets their vote.
Click to cancel does not mean exactly what the name implies. It means cancellation must be as easy as signup [1]. In your example, signup is not a click away, so the cancellation process need not be. Itâs a very reasonable position.
To be fair, the name "click to cancel" does not, in fact, imply that cancellation must be as easy as signup in cases where signup is not a click away. A name that would better imply that would be something like "symmetric cancellation", or "cancellation parity". However, that would be less catchy to the public than "click to cancel".
> A rule is proposed to require customers to be able to cancel any subscription on the vendor's website.
Except that's not the proposed rule. The way this works in California (and the way the rule the FTC recently published works, I believe) is that a business is required to allow customers to cancel "in the same medium" that they subscribed. That doesn't require anyone to start running a website.
The rest of your post is just arguing against something that's not even happening.
> a business is required to allow customers to cancel "in the same medium" that they subscribed.
But then you're not really fixing it anymore. "Must be able to cancel directly via website" (i.e. without waiting for a customer service rep) might have been useful. Require only the same medium and soon Dish has both sign up and cancellation happen via a customer service chat window on their website, but if you choose sign up the chat has representatives/acceptance bots appear instantaneously to approve your sign up, whereas cancellation has a four hour queue and if you fail to wiggle your mouse every 30 seconds you get timed out.
You have to come up with a rule strict enough to defeat the corporate lawyers without making it so complicated or comprehensive that it puts significant compliance costs on smaller entities. Which is really hard to do, with the result that most of the rules that actually pass don't do that, which is why people get irked.
One of the better ways to actually solve this is to have some fairly significant entity size thresholds (e.g. thousands of employees and millions of customers) and then exempt all smaller entities but fasten the larger entities to the wall with red tape. If you could get the regulators to consistently do that. But because that's typically not what happens, people continue to be discontented.
As-is, it works very well in California. I had never experienced the resistance you imagined during the 3-4 years I lived in California, and regularly cancelled subscriptions that were notoriously hard in other states
California passed the click to cancel law this year. They passed a different law trying to make it easier to cancel subscriptions in 2018. The need for them to revisit it implies that the original one wasn't working.
Corporations act strategically. They typically don't immediately thwart new laws because the coalition that passed them is still intact and would try to do something about it. So they wait a minute, maybe take the time to buy some more legislators, before testing the fences again.
If people have forgotten about them by then you lose, and if people haven't forgotten about them by then, California passes the 2024 law and you lose the other way. Because they pass the new law in addition to rather than instead of the old one, even though the old one has stopped working, so you have a ratchet of ever-increasing compliance costs that also apply to all the companies that were never doing anything wrong to begin with but still have to hire lawyers to evaluate their activities against an entire bookshelf of rules to see if any of them require something they're not doing.
No timers, no human interaction. And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.)
Is there something in the proposed rule that actually says this? And if so, what happens to the small business that does cancellations over email/phone and therefore requires human interaction?
> And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.)
The issue isn't that you care if the cancellation happens at 9AM or 9PM, it's that if you have to wait twelve hours to speak to a representative you give up before reaching the point you can make the request.
You make the rule such that if you can sign up for a service on a website you can also cancel it said website. Now your hypothetical landscaping company is safe
for many people, any kind of regulation that restricts companies abilities to make money, regardless of the consequences for average citizen, is "wasteful and discourages innovation". Elon would like to get rid of the FTC altogether for that reason, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was set up to help protect users from scammy behavior like this.
so yeah, don't hold your breath for the next 4 years (or longer if Elon manages to buy the next election too)
I revisited Henry Hazlittâs economics in one lesson and in the chapter on labour unions, he actually is fairly moderate provided that unions stick to non-price distorting policies.
Making wage information more accessible to workers being a policy he- an Austrian School economist- supports.
This government ruling falls under that class of policies IMO. It makes prices much more available to consumers and does not on first inspection threaten to distort supply and demand.
My preferred way to cancel these types of services is to close or pause the card they're charging. If you use a virtual card service like Privacy.com, this is easy, if you don't, then maybe not so much. But using virtual cards for everything you can is typically a good idea anyway, imo.
You can dispute debt in collections by requesting proof of the debt. The consumer protections in that area (debt collections) are quite a bit more developed than any consumer protections about intentional procedural inefficiency when cancelling service.
you will end up with damaged credit. The only negative on my credit report is from a verizon phone I bought from a verizon store (actually ended up not being Verizon owned store,) which i returned within the 7 days return fee, even paid re-stocking fee. But which the store credits me for having returned it later than I did, which allowed Verizon charged me 1 month service fee, which I never got a bill or email even though verizon had both, until it showed up on credit as collection. Nothing I did could get it off.
You can probably avoid thisâor, rather, cover your ass legallyâby doing something like sending them a letter registered mail informing them that you are cancelling and will be blocking further payments.
It's far from a good solution, but it should at least put you in a better position vis-a-vis the courts if it comes to that.
Actually there is another option. Make a complaint to your state's Attorney General's Office. They usually have a website for filing consumer complaints, and AGO will contact the business, and the business is usually responsive when contacted by AGO.
It certainly takes less that 45 minutes to send registered mail. There are even online services to which you can upload a PDF or document of your message. I have done this on numerous occasions.
For some people, being on the phone for 45 minutes (and what guarantee is there that you'd actually get to talk to them after 45 minutes?) during business hours is simply not an option. They would have to take time off from work, which a) might not be allowed, and b) if allowed would certainly reduce their pay.
Furthermore, there's an entire category of people for whom "talk on the phone" is not an option, period. If they wanted to cancel by the approved method, they'd not only need to take that time themselves, they'd need someone else willing to take that time with them.
Simple anecdote, but when I paid a medical bill and they still came after me and sent it to collections, I contested the bill and told the collection agency that this is not my debt. Never heard from them again.
We have hundreds of years of examples of the blessed free market failing to do exactly that.
If the free market had it's way we'd still be under the yoke of Standard Oil and Ma Bell.
One key element of a free market is the "well informed consumer". How is the consumer supposed to be informed about what new cutting edge chemicals are toxic, for instance?
Precisely. The overarching HN view, although it's not a monolith (so the viewpoint isn't shared by all), is that the free market solves for all things and regulation by the government is largely a waste of taxpayer money that could be going to other things worthwhile (roads, military, police).
The woke ideology wants to add all of this nonsense regulation and make it hard for real entrepreneurs to generate value in the wonderful system of capitalism. /s
P.S. this is also a good summary of every all in podcast episode post election
The hidden fees is what turned me off from AirBnb...
Because it would display the nightly rate as $X.
But then at checkout, it would add in "house cleaning fees" etc (which I don't dispute is a fair fee to include) but it at times can grossly misrepresent what your true nightly cost is when searching.
Maybe this will be a step in the direction like Telco's have had to do with creating simplified & standardized "nutrition labels" for pricing.
An excellent change. It's unfortunate that stewardship of the committee will soon change hands as Khan has been a great advocate for fair contracts between companies and consumers during her tenure.
Pro-market: pro-market advocates for policies that enhance competition and market efficiency. Understands that god markets are made. Pro-market advocates believe in creating conditions where businesses can compete fairly without undue advantages from government favoritism. Government regulation can be essential to correct market failures and promote a level playing field.
Free market: and ideological stance where markets are without government intervention. Belief in ideal world where market failures don't exist and if they exists that's a good thing.
They most likely aren't idealist, as that isn't a requirement. Anyone who's smarter than a potato can notice some of the more glaring failures (even if they don't understand the mechanism behind it).
Everything is ideology to some extent, but not everything is ideological to the same degree. The beliefs that a level playing field is good and that winning by means of political favoritism is bad are almost universally agreed on. Almost all political philosophies, including various shades of socialism and communism, agree that markets are needed to some degree if only for price discovery.
Republicans have made the term ideological a negative one. Sure, the dictionary definition is to relate to ideology; but in practice (especially when talking politics) it implies one is picking a worse option because it aligns with their ideology. So their claim above is one is picking free markets due to ideology, whereas another would pick pro markets because it's actually the best solution.
Because they are against one and for the other. Pro markets means whatever policies they agree with, which is of course how all broken highly regulated markets begin their run.
I mean, I agree that Khan is the best possible option, but I disagree that pro-market isn't ideological.
Where the free market fans see child slavery and sexual slavery and rejoice (free to make any contract you want to after all), the pro market people believe that if you just put enough guard rails on it, greed will magically turn into a force for good.
Obviously I also have an ideology, but at least I'm honest enough to not pretend that capitalism (or communism/anarchy) are naturally occuring, instead of simply a choice we make.
The Reason piece is lazy drive-by snark. Calling the anti-trust standards of the 20c "hipster anti-trust" is just a-historical. Blocking consolidation of national chains is hardly some crazy innovation. In fact, it was Bork who was the rebel introducing the stricter "consumer harm" standard. People might argue which is the appropriate standard -- the one invented during the 1890s to break the most powerful trusts in history, or the one invented by a Regan appointee in 1980 to replace it. But the Reason snark does nothing except claim it.
At least the WSJ makes an actual argument about consumer harm. Unfortunately, their argument is: there has been so much consolidation in distribution, we need to consolidate retail to increase their bargaining power to balance. Given the geographical nature of grocery shopping, consolidation is likely to reduce consumer bargaining power further. That the WSJ fails to acknowledge the obvious fact that the greater power of a merged entity would act on both sides of the market is bad-faith.
Khan has been absolutely spectacular for the free markets. Transparency in pricing (with this law), transparency in cancellation of subscriptions, blocking acquisitions where businesses should fail.
The free market shouldn't allow monopolies, or duopolies to form. Bad businesses should fail, not absorb more capital and continue scaling.
Free competition should mean that you don't get punished for winning. There is no sport that punishes a competitor who is constantly winning, as long as they are competing fairly. Imagine Schwarzenegger being banned from Mr Olympia or Gretzky being banned for life from minor league ice hockey. So that the other competitors are given a fair chance of winning.
But every sport punishes competitors who are cheating or being unsportsmanlike. As it should be in the marketplace. But hackers and the EU and US bureaucrats think that being a leader in a market has to be punished for being a "monopoly". While always turning a blind eye to rampant fraud and scams that are in the marketplace everywhere online and offline.
> There is no sport that punishes a competitor who is constantly winning, as long as they are competing fairly
Almost all North American sports have a player entry draft, where the weighting is based on your success. The best teams (eg the Detroit Red Wings of the 90âs and 00âs) are given garbage draft picks, while the bottom-feeders (eg the Edmonton Oilers of the late 00âs-early 10âs) are given (the opportunity for) superstars. This is clearly a punishment for doing well, and a reward for being terrible.
Most sports have a salary cap to prevent being able to buy your way to success. They recognize that having more money than your opponent gives you an unfair advantage and destroys competition.
It's funny you bring up Schwarzenegger, as his last Olympia win was mired in controversy for being almost certainly rigged.
Did he cheat? No, everyone used a similar amount of steroids. But to anyone with eyes and a basic knowledge of the sport it's overwhelmingly obvious that the organizers and judges threw it in his favor because of the attention it would bring.
Which is the issue when an entity becomes too big to fail. There is a power disparity that is virtually impossible to overcome as the leverage is so much that any opponent can be swat down with ease.
Things such as:
- leveraging economies of scale when dealing with suppliers and resources to the point of starving access to competition
- using lobbyists to write legislation in their favor or blockade opponents
- doing fuck all with no reservations, then pay out lawsuits and fines at an order of magnitude less than profit made and damage done
> There is no sport that punishes a competitor who is constantly winning, as long as they are competing fairly.
Constantly winning in a competitive environment with no runaway feedback loops[0] is evidence of cheating.
See also, casinos: the "legitimate" ones don't rig the game - they know the odds; they expect you to win something here and then, but if they see you winning consistently, they'll rightfully assume you're cheating somehow, and ban you from the venue.
> But every sport punishes competitors who are cheating or being unsportsmanlike. As it should be in the marketplace.
Marketplace isn't like sportsball. It's like war. On the market like in war, anything goes. The only people who can afford living under delusion of market sportsmanship are people who are already so well-off and safe they can treat it as a game; for everyone else, it's a matter of life and death.
> But hackers and the EU and US bureaucrats think that being a leader in a market has to be punished for being a "monopoly".
The market isn't some divine ball game, or a magic ritual. It's a feedback system, with known failure modes. Wrt. monopolies, in particular, any good profit-seeking actor will aim at becoming a monopolist in their market segment, because that's how they can maximize profits while minimizing effort. At the same time, the market serves a critical function in organizing human society - but that stops working when monopolies pop up.
It's really very simple: all the goods and services and advancement we enjoy require market players to be actively putting in effort. To society, an entrepreneur is basically a donkey with a pole mounted to it, from which there hangs a carrot, just out of reach - the donkey just wants to grab the carrot, but the society only benefits when the donkey is chasing it. The donkey needs to believe they can win, so it keeps running, but it also can never be allowed to actually get their prize, because then it'll stop. That's why markets are regulated as to let people and companies grow and accumulate winnings, until a point, past which they'd stop participating (or worse, just go screwing around breaking things).
I.e. it's not about punishing someone for winning - it's about preventing them from complete victory, because then they become useless to society.
> While always turning a blind eye to rampant fraud and scams that are in the marketplace everywhere online and offline.
Who's turning a blind eye to it? Fraud and scams are the base state of the market; it's what it decays to if left to its own devices. Regulations are there to counteract this tendency.
--
[0] - Feedback loops like compounding interest. In sports, unlike in the economy, you can't just reinvest your win to get more wins, and then reinvest them in turn, until you're winning so much so fast that no one can ever hope to catch up with you.
> Constantly winning in a competitive environment with no runaway feedback loops[0] is evidence of cheating.
Right. How did Usain Bolt cheat? How did Michael Phelps cheat? How did ABBA cheat?
> any good profit-seeking actor will aim at becoming a monopolist in their market segment
Of course. And then hackers redefine the market segment to encompass that businesses product and ta-da, you have a monopoly. Like Apple.
If we're talking about real monopolies, then I couldn't agree more. But what hackers and the EU are doing is redefining monopoly in a dishonest way because they have personal grudges against a company.
> The donkey needs to believe they can win, so it keeps running, but it also can never be allowed to actually get their prize, because then it'll stop.
Here's something to blow your mind: The donkey enjoys running. Or let's take a real life example: sled dogs. They love pulling the sled. Entrepreneurs love working and love competing. Those who don't love it usually pull out of the game with their profits way before they have even national impact.
This is a huge divide in attitude I've seen everywhere in the world in my life. You have category X of people who see all kind of work as an immense suffering. They complain endlessly, do the minimum effort, and never get anywhere. And you have category Y of people who love working, because it's doing something productive and learning. That doesn't mean that they're satisfied with being abused wage slaves. Rather it is the first category who never advances in life, because they think it's all a scam. People in the second category also fail a lot because they take chances. But they usually get up again.
> Who's turning a blind eye to it? Fraud and scams are the base state of the market; it's what it decays to if left to its own devices. Regulations are there to counteract this tendency.
All governments and law enforcement seem to be turning a blind eye to it. About 50% of advertisements on Facebook and Instagram are outright scams, ie physical products from brand names that are advertised at bargain prices and if you "buy" it you will not get delivery because it is an outright scam. US and EU governments should fine Meta billions of dollars for having their main source of income from organized crime and fraud. But they are focused on completely irrelevant crap like app stores. Talk about sieving mosquitoes and swallowing camels.
Personally, I think she's for the free market. She is progressive, which is controversial, but I don't really see why non-billionaires run to the defense of big tech when their monopolistic status is scrutinized.
I totally understand why billionaires do, on the other hand. Worth watching Reid Hoffman embarrass himself on Jake Tapper on the subject of Khan recently for those interested
Because people have been conditioned through the media to believe that once the Billionares get taxed, you're next.
We're at an unprecedented levels of wealth inequality in America. Billion dollar businesses built on tax payer money, should contribute to the system. Instead we've designed a system where these companies would rather pay millions of dollars in campaign contributions and to lobbyists.
I well mm used to like reason a while ago but this is laughable.
The article does not show how or explain why or in which manner she affects consumers.
It says that she has been bad for them but there is no proof of this.
Instead it makes quite a comical attempt at trying to vaguely point at the sky and say she is evil or overreaching, but she is not and anyone whoa actually wants a free market can tell you that. I honestly just cannot understand what happened to Reason I checked some more or their side articles and wow the quality has dropped to a level that would make the NYT blush.
That is an a-historical claim. That standard was THE standard from 1890-1980. The consumer-harm standard was the innovation of Bork under Regan in 1980.
EDIT: to make it easier here's a list of actions from perplexity:
Here are more explicit actions taken by the FTC under Lina Khan's leadership:
Lawsuit against Amazon (2023): The FTC filed a landmark antitrust case accusing Amazon of monopolistic practices in its online marketplace and Prime subscription service.
Meta (Facebook) lawsuit (2023): The FTC sued Meta to block its acquisition of virtual reality app maker Within Unlimited, citing concerns about monopolization in the VR market.
Microsoft-Activision merger challenge (2023): The FTC attempted to block Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, though it ultimately failed.
Kroger-Albertsons merger: A U.S. district court judge ruled in favor of the FTC to block the proposed $25 billion merger between these two major supermarket chains
Nvidia's acquisition of Arm: The FTC sued to block this merger, though it's not explicitly mentioned in the search results
Amazon's acquisition of iRobot: While not explicitly mentioned in the search results, this is another high-profile merger that the FTC has challenged under Khan's leadership.
Enforcement against data brokers (2022-2023): The FTC took action against several data brokers for selling precise geolocation data that could be used to track people's movements.
Zoom settlement (2021): The FTC finalized a settlement with Zoom over allegations of deceptive security practices.
Right to Repair initiative (2021): Khan's FTC unanimously voted to ramp up law enforcement against repair restrictions that prevent small businesses, workers, and consumers from fixing their own products.
Made in USA labeling rule (2021): The FTC finalized a new rule cracking down on marketers who make false, unqualified claims that their products are Made in the USA.
Penalties for fake reviews (2022): The FTC imposed multi-million dollar penalties on companies for using fake reviews and suppressing negative reviews.
Action against "dark patterns" (2021-2023): The FTC has taken action against companies using deceptive design practices known as "dark patterns" to trick consumers.
Increased use of Penalty Offense Authority: The FTC has revived its Penalty Offense Authority to seek civil penalties for violations of FTC administrative orders.
Ban on hidden junk fees: The FTC announced a rule requiring companies to show full prices for items like hotel rooms, concert tickets, and sporting events upfront, rather than hiding fees until the end of the checkout process
Changes to merger review process: The FTC has altered principles, practices, and policies of merger review that had been in place for decades
Expanded scope of enforcement: The FTC has taken a more holistic approach to identifying harms affecting workers, independent businesses, and consumers, with a focus on addressing power asymmetries and unlawful practices
Rulemaking changes: Chair Khan has orchestrated wholesale changes in FTC rulemaking practices and policies
Proposed ban on noncompete clauses: The FTC has proposed banning noncompete clauses in employer agreements
Increased focus on data privacy: The FTC has sued multiple companies for allegedly sharing customer data and warned about the "hidden impacts" of advertising tools like third-party tracking pixels
> Also, the service is amazing, and they won't accept tips. If you leave money on the table, they will chase after you, to give it back.
I visited Japan some years back and loved this aspect of the culture as well. An Australian ski guide (this was a winter visit) explained it like so: "the Japanese attitude is to want to do a good job by default. Tipping implies that a good job is only done because of pay. The Japanese see quality service as intrinsically valuable in itself."
Japan does have a well known âcustomer is godâ cultural background; whether or not tipping has anything to do with that is here or there, though it is the expectation that if someone does a job, it is expected not to be half assed.
One of the big differences between here in Japan and other parts of the world Iâve visited and lived in, is the near absence of service staff who actively make a point of looking like they hate their life and treat you like crap, though this is slowly changing here too.
This kind of reply is what makes me want to quit HN forever. There's always somebody out there smarter who knows better. Why bother to try and contribute anything?
As a kid, having grown up in the UK I knew that if the price label said ÂŁ1.99 and I had ÂŁ2 in my pocket I could afford it, with ÂŁ0.01 change. First time I went to the USA as a young teenager I remember being quite embarrassed when the thing I thought I was getting for $1.99 was actually not $1.99 but $2.17 or whatever, and I had to leave without buying. Felt quite deceptive and totally incomprehensible.
I'm not sure Japan is the best example here. My experience is that most shops have the price excluding consumption tax printed very prominently in large numbers, and then price including consumption tax is printed in much smaller writing underneath.
The price excluding tax is the only one you can read at a distance, that draws you in. As someone from the UK who is used to seeing price tags show the final price you pay at the till, I was constantly disappointed that items weren't quite such a bargain as I'd first hoped.
On the whole there are still many things that are much cheaper than in the UK though :)
If you go to a donqi the price tags list without the tax besides small text that either lists the full price or says "+10% consumption tax" or along those lines.
As a tourist you don't always have to pay the consumption tax though.
There was a period of a few years where they raised the sales tax in steps 5%, 8%, 10%, and stores were allowed to show the price without tax during that period, which has left some practices a bit messy since.
I have done a fair bit of travelling. The US is the only place I've been where the price shown is not the price paid. Adding on tips, and it becomes nigh on impossible to know how much something will cost you upfront. It's ridiculous tbh
Japan has the exact same sales tax rate(s) across the entire country, and it rarely changes. In the US, we have thousands of different rates and they change multiple times per year.
Also, while it is the norm in Japan to include the tax, there are some exceptions.
(Japan has 2 rates, 8% for certain items like food, and 10% for everything else).
Brick and mortar stores know exactly how much tax they have to pay, yet they don't show an all-inclusive price. It's clearly not a case of online retailers just not showing the tax because it's difficult. If they wanted to they could let you give your post code before checking out, and query the same database to show the post-tax price for everything.
Aside from silly "sales-tax-holidays" I've never heard of the sales tax rates changing so frequently. I'm curious to know where this is happening "multiple times per year". Here in MA it's been the same rate for 15 years.
And for the sales-tax-holiday situation can't a shop just say something like "everything will have x% taken off at the register" just like they would during a typical "10% off all items" type of sale?
Around me most stores change their price tags weekly, if not more often. They either have a sheet with new tags or a small printer and scanner and they swap out the tags on the shelf.
> In the US, we have thousands of different rates and they change multiple times per year.
Yet at any given moment, every proprietor is miraculously able calculate the taxes due at the point of sale. The variety of tax regimes, and the fact that the amounts change doesn't impact the ability to calculate the final amount due.
I believe this is the default for most of the world. Some countries have some strange differences like Argentina having a table charge on your bill, but here in Australia, the price on the box is the price at the till, with the exception of the card surcharges which are currently being reviewed to be removed.
The exception here is also the holiday surcharge (an extra fee on holidays and Sundays), which has to be "disclosed" before ordering. Usually there is a small sign somewhere that nobody pays attention to.
The price part is essentially the same all over the world except for America, where youâre not entirely sure how much more youâll have to add for taxes and tips.
No -- it's the norm in countries that have a single uniform VAT.
It's obviously not the norm in countries that have sales taxes which vary by locality.
Whether a country is "developed" or not has nothing to do with it. The vast majority of countries in Africa have a VAT, while the world's richest country has a sales tax.
> It's obviously not the norm in countries that have sales taxes which vary by locality
Why not? If each store or restaurant or theatre or whatever in each locality know what price to bill you, they know the applicable price to show you upfront.
> Whether a country is "developed" or not has nothing to do with it. The vast majority of countries in Africa have a VAT, while the world's richest country has a sales tax.
The relevance of developed or not is how much of the economy is informal or includes a part of negotiation.
and Ctrl+F for "informal" or "negotiation". There are a lot of indicators of developing vs developed countries, but your idea is most assuredly not one of them. Also, sales tax vs VAT has nothing to do with an informal economy or price negotiation either.
> Because it makes state-level or national-level advertising of prices impossible. Or even local-level in many cases.
In large countries like Canada, and I would imagine the US, you probably don't want to advertise prices nationally. The cost of goods to will be different for a business in Vancouver and Southern Ontario compared to the Atlantic Provinces. Never mind small towns in remote communities connected to the road network, such as Northern Ontario. Especially never mind small towns in remote communities that are not connected to the road network.
> Because it makes state-level or national-level advertising of prices impossible. Or even local-level in many cases
Hardly impossible, just slightly less easy ("available for $X* (pre-tax)" / "starting at $X").
And are seriously claiming that ease for advertisers takes precedence over ease of use and pricing transparency for consumers?
> and Ctrl+F for "informal" or "negotiation". There are a lot of indicators of developing vs developed countries, but your idea is most assuredly not one of them. Also, sales tax vs VAT has nothing to do with an informal economy or price negotiation either.
Thank you. What I meant was that the only reason it might not be the standard in some developing countries is that they might have more informal economies with more negotiations involved. Literally the only legitimate excuse. But when that's not the case, from Morocco to Sri Lanka to Uzbekistan, price is shown upfront, everything included.
And that's not a point of pride now, is it. If you're the best but others are clearly beating you in a few categories, that's more reasons to improve to try to be the best everywhere, not put your hands in your ears and pretend nothing is wrong.
If you're talking about sales taxes, they can't until you input your shipping address. Because they depend on where you live.
Nobody's trying to fool you by not including sales taxes. There's just no way to show them in advance, unless you want to start typing your address and zip code into every shopping website before you even browse.
> Sales tax is up to the states to sort out how to deal with on their own, and there's 50 of them.
To add on for any else trying to figure out the 13k number from this statement.
Counties can also apply their own additional taxes.
Cities can also apply their own additional taxes.
On top of just that, the cities and counties can set different taxes in the same area, such as a sugar tax or an alcohol tax or even a pre-prepared food tax vs groceries. It gets complicated fast.
it can get really easy: just don't let this madness sprawl out of control? :)
per state, I understand the tax. set it per state, and be done with it. maybe split it in some % with the city (I don't know if cities directly get a portion of it already or not?), so it's a win-win.
Items I order at home are subject to a 7.25% sales tax rate.
My neighbor across the street (our front doors are maybe 80 feet apart) pays 6.75%.
We both live in the same zip code. We both live within the same city. We both live in the same school district. We each live in two different counties.
(And up the road a bit, a third county is involved instead.)
But some cities have their own sales taxes in addition to (or instead of) county sales taxes, so county alone isn't good enough.
Besides, there's literally 30 different counties in the US named "Hancock".
(If this were an easy problem to solve it'd have been solved a long time ago.)
---
I think we're already back to where we started, wherein: In order to display an accurate sales tax, we need to know the address, city, and state of the buyer.
A lot of sites, for example Amazon, don't update VAT until checkout, even if you set "Ship to [country]" when searching. Then the price suddenly jumps.
Yes bc in the EU there is national VAT. In the US there is state and local sales tax. You can and will pay different sales tax between cities in a given state.
You can do this, albeit slightly less reliably, in the US as well. The geolocation isn't perfect, but you could easily put "With delivery to XXXXX [edit]" where XXXXX is a zip code you geolocate off an ip (or lookup in a user profile for a recurring user).
Yes, because my IP address doesn't give them a way to calculate tentative taxes? My IP can be used to serve me ads, but not serve me actually relevant information?
There's a very small % of traffic that actually uses VPNs
Correct, it doesn't. IP geolocation is nowhere near precise enough.
Remember, sales tax isn't something big like state-level. It's literally town-level, including tiny towns. Two sides of the same street can have a different sales tax.
Not to mention all the extra rules, such as individual clothing items under $110 being exempt in New York.
It somehow works almost anywhere outside of NA? It's really not a crazy concept - estimate it based on geolocation and say "more exact will be available once you enter your address". The problem is, that genuinely negatively affect the sales because people see the true price of things.
> estimate it based on geolocation and say "more exact will be available once you enter your address".
I appreciate this can be done and countries in Europe do it, I just don't see how this is any better at all than status quo:
* Current State: we all know the quoted price doesn't include sales tax, which will be added to make the final price in checkout after we enter our address.
* Final State: we all know the quoted price will likely change during checkout, when we see the final price after we enter our address.
So we make things more complicated for vendors, and we make it not just acceptable but required that vendors use our IP addresses for geolocation, only to give us a maybe-right-maybe-wrong final price. Does anyone feel scammed by not having tax included on the price in the listings of Macy's online store?
The only reason why status quo is there because people are less likely to remove items from their online shopping carts once they've added it. There are techniques and shopping check out flows that have been perfected over the years to drive up the online sales. Realistically, it won't move the needle for the people who are on this forum because of the average salary (a few dollars are usually not a big deal for us), but it can be a make it or break it choice for a good chunk of customers.
I'm not sure why one wouldn't want to know the real price before the checkout. It's a bit baffling to me. It could be a cultural thing as well, then I guess, there isn't really a right or wrong way of looking at it.
Fair, I guess it's a cultural thing then. I absolutely have no idea what other municipality's taxes are the second I get out of mine. I wouldn't want to randomly predict whether it's 10, 12, or 15%.
> The only reason why status quo is there because people are less likely to remove items from their online shopping carts once they've added it.
Sure, in a world where the actual sticker price is displayed. Do you believe this will remain true when customers have to add items to the cart to get the ârealâ price?
That's literally how it works everywhere else...? For example, when I go to amazon.jp, even without logging in, it will show you tax included prices once you enter your postal code.
Apparently they can track you to the nearest 5m 24 hours a day, figure out that your teenage daughter is pregnant and replicate your likeness and voice perfectly - but when it comes to sales tax its an intractable problem.
I believe you are referencing the famous Target case. As I understand the dad was angry that Target was sending baby-related coupons to his teenage daughter.
Finding out your teenage daughter is pregnant based on her shopping is easy. Itâs actually harder not to notice. âCustomers like you also boughtâ is an effective algorithm because people are mostly the same. Pregnancy has some very specific and unique needs which create a strong signal.
Nobody is in a shady back room poring over chat logs and GPS coordinates looking for pregnant teenagers. It just falls out of the sysem.
That's a non-sequitur unless the question being considered is specifically whether a data hoarder like Google should build in estimated sales tax in their store vs "a random shopping cart from a retailer I've never interacted with before".
Yeah, I totally get you! I've done exactly this work for semi-B2B company where it clearly showed the sticker price effect and we ended up removing the taxes from it. Unless it's legislated, it's obvious the way the companies will go.
Is North America unique in allowing local municipalities to set their own taxes?
> It's really not a crazy concept - estimate it based on geolocation and say "more exact will be available once you enter your address".
Thatâs exactly what happens now, except the advertised price is actually correct instead of an âestimateâ. I have an intuitive sense for local tax. How can I know what method was used to compute this estimated price?
Out of my head, if I recall correctly, Australia, Japan, Denmark do local municipal taxes as well (some are more flat than others).
Anyways, all I was saying that it's a solved UX problem, and the reason why you're not getting full price is because A/B testing has shown that when customers see the complete price, they get a shock and less likely to buy the item. This doesn't have much to do with websites caring about some edge cases that they'll somehow won't be able to give out exact price to you. In the worst case, the shopping websites could ask you to enter your postal code and show all prices with the tax included price.
Because according to Japanese law, in most of the scenarios, the full price, to your best ability, has to be presented to the potential customer. Same goes for Australia, if I recall correctly. No clue about Denmark, I'm sorry. But assuming it's similar over there as well.
It's not that NA is the only one susceptible to A/B testing. It's more of a - it's-grey-area-to-illegal to not show full prices outside of NA.
> Because according to Japanese law, in most of the scenarios, the full price, to your best ability, has to be presented to the potential customer.
Are you sure? When I shop in Japan, it seems like about 50/50 where they have sales tax included, or not. However, the price tag will be clear if the price includes sales tax or not.
I agree, there are a lot of cases where they don't show the full prices. Especially in the recent years when they've been changing the consumption tax rapidly, and allowing shops to have some leeway. But online prices, almost everywhere, include tax. Even Shopify forces JP merchants to display them while selling in the area.
You just put your postal code and it shows all prices according to your municipality, it will be as exact as you can get. Just go to amazon.jp, it should have a text input somewhere for your postal code to calculate the tax.
In terms of gaming, hmm⌠I guess, you could add wrong municipalityâs taxes when you show the original price, and switch over at the checkout. But my assumption is that would be deemed illegal, as you are knowingly misleading the customer. Some in person stores still try a bit to mislead you by putting the full price in smaller font (like including the consumption tax), and exclude it over it in the bigger font. But I can still accept that, as I am informed about the full price somehow.
My guess is approximate (average?) tax. I'm currently outside of Japan, by default Amazon shows me the price in Yen and says it can't deliver to me. When I put down the postal code in Tokyo, shows the same amount. Probably takes the biggest city's tax rate when it can't determine it through geolocation.
Why wouldnât 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 other countries, almost all display prices have to include local taxes. Itâs a solved problem, but thereâs no political appetite for it in US/Canada because it will hurt the sales.
Not sure how telco taxes work in Japan but it would be impossible to advertise an accurate tax-included price in my city because not all the residents of the metro area have the same tax structure. Zip code isn't enough. The full address is required. So TV and print advertisements are pre-tax. I don't see how it could work any other way.
Yep, where I currently live based on IP geolocation I would be quoted incorrect state sales tax 100% of the time. Though it's sort of the perfect geography to be problematic (Vancouver, WA side of the greater Portland, OR metro area spanning a sales tax/no sales tax state boundary).
I will take the blurb which says taxes are an approximate calculation based on web browsing data available, vs, no taxes shown. We're gate keeping good features for large % of users over some edge cases.
So currently they correctly advertise the pre-tax price but since thatâs not the correct total price your proposal is to display an approximate price which is also not the correct total price. I donât see how this reduces ambiguity.
> A higher price is more accurate than the pretax price
Well, no, it isnât. Consider the Oregon/Washington border. An IP could bounce around there. Oregon has zero sales tax so the pre-tax price is literally correct for Oregon residents. Adding estimated tax will be less accurate.
Similarly I could live in unincorporated King County such as White Center and not be subject to Seattle tax while still being subject to King County and Washington tax even though the other side of the street is Seattle.
Thereâs a sugary drink tax in Seattle. The border is Roxbury. Thereâs a 7/11 on Roxbury in White Center. Should a 7/11 sandwich board on the Seattle side of the street across from that 7/11 advertise the price with or without that tax?
Or, just get rid of sales tax anyway. It is the 2nd or 3rd time the same money has been taxed, depending on how you view it, and it's pretty ridiculous that a person with $100 in their bank account (post-taxes) still does not have the equivalent of $100 of purchasing power.
Itâs the transaction that is taxed, not the money.
By your logic I shouldnât have to pay income tax on sales because my customers already paid income tax. We could simply the whole thing by just making dollar bills worth $0.66.
> By your logic I shouldnât have to pay income tax on sales because my customers already paid income tax.
People often believe that because something has been for a while, it must always be so. Not too long ago we didn't have sales tax (introduced in the 1950's), and things were fine.
You are taxed on your income, and you are taxed on your expenses. If you invest that money or do anything productive with it, it gets taxed again. That's such a ridiculous idea - pick one and stick with it. Make it whatever percentage it needs to be, and that's it.
When someone looks at their bank account - that ought to be the final word on how much purchasing power that individual has. It shouldn't be handwavy minus 7-12%.
Mind you, that's 7-12% in addition to the 20-30% you already paid.
Progressive income tax is also silly. Just because you earn more money than someone else doesn't mean you derive more benefits from the government.
The idea of "Paying what you can afford" is BS everywhere it's been implemented - from school tuition to soccer camp to taxes. Everyone feels burned and like the "others" aren't paying what they should be.
Federal taxes should be a flat percentage, no deductions, no credits, no so-called "loop holes"... nothing. Every citizen pays the same percentage (whatever it needs to be).
The incumbent tax apparatus would never allow us to have something so simple, though.
For a nation that got it's start in no small part due to being over-taxed, it's very interesting to see just how much tax shenanigans we tolerate today.
> Progressive income tax is also silly. Just because you earn more money than someone else doesn't mean you derive more benefits from the government
Ok...
> Federal taxes should be a flat percentage, no deductions, no credits, no so-called "loop holes"... nothing. Every citizen pays the same percentage (whatever it needs to be).
Flat percentage? A flat percentage means that if you earn N times what someone else earns you pay N times as much tax as they do.
But you just said a couple of paragraphs earlier that just because you earn more money that someone else doesn't mean you derive more benefits from the government. If that's going to be the basis of your tax policy shouldn't the tax be a flat amount?
> Progressive income tax is also silly. Just because you earn more money than someone else doesn't mean you derive more benefits from the government.
I think "pay what you can afford" is fair because the only way to make half a million dollars (or more) a year is to disproportionately reap the benefits of society. Marginal income tax is fair in the sense that everyone does pay the same. Your $11,001st dollar is taxed the same as everyone else, just like your $578,126th dollar. If you don't want to pay the highest rates then take advantage of deductions (aka incentives aka loopholes) and invest in creating jobs.
> Everyone feels burned and like the "others" aren't paying what they should be.
I definitely don't feel this way and I am happy to pay my marginal rates. I just don't think they go far enough.
> Federal taxes should be a flat percentage, no deductions, no credits, no so-called "loop holes"... nothing. Every citizen pays the same percentage (whatever it needs to be).
Do you propose a flat income tax or a flat wealth tax? Should capital gains be taxed as income?
> For a nation that got it's start in no small part due to being over-taxed, it's very interesting to see just how much tax shenanigans we tolerate today.
My understanding was that the issue was lack of representation or ability to levy local taxes but I admit my knowledge of that point in history is weak. The America of today is certainly different from revolutionary times. I would say it is better.
Yup, I know what sales tax is in my state and can do the math in my head pretty easily to get the approx. amount. If you live in a state for any length of time you should be able to do this too. even if its something odd like 7.25% you can figure out what 10% is really quickly and know it'll be a little less than that.
I'm not sure who these presumably tech-adjacent folks are who can't look at a posted price, know something about the tax/tipping/etc. conventions are, and know about what the final bill will be.
That said, I DO agree that hidden facility/resort/etc. fees and the like should go. For years, there was a conference center restoration fee tacked onto hotels all over NYC even the project wasn't even approved. Rental cars at airports are also a nightmare. There is no reason for them.
GP mentioned "sticker price", so I suspect they possibly meant physical goods or services. If you're in a retail store, there are no real obstacles (except for business unwillingness to be honest to the customer) to calculate and disclose the final price. A store knows where it's located, and that's where the sale happens.
Right, but even when they do have your zipcode (because you added beforehand for checking stock for example) they don't update the prices. It would be nice to have the option
Why do US states allow counties and cities to raise so many taxes?
Usually (across the world and across history) the power of taxation is very jealously guarded, and local government is usually only allowed to gather a limited range of taxes. Historically sovereigns have treated attempts by subordinates to raise their own taxes as tantamount to treason.
The new rule does have clarification that they at least have to show you the final price with taxes+shipping before they're allowed to take your credit card. Those ones I get, because they can't be calculated without knowing your billing zip code.
Hidden and not yet calculated are different things. They should just make a broad and sweeping stances on these hidden fees. The fact they play whack-a-mole from implementing this from industry to industry as the 'need' arises seems silly. If a price is advertised or quoted, it should be inclusive all the things with tax being the one exception.
Very easy, we can get inspiration from the web shops 10 years ago (and still a majority of honest sites today) : the price of the item and somewhere close the base shipping price and a (legal minimum size) link "shipping price" redirecting to a shipping price table. We can even impose the table framework like the nutritional information on food to avoid volontary complexification of that page.
In some areas, sales tax is actual multiple taxes from different overlapping jurisdictions: state, county, city, and sometimes special tax district. ZIP codes don't align with any of these, so you need to know exactly where the buyer is in order to properly calculate sales tax.
There are places where adjacent addresses in the same ZIP code have different sales tax rates.
Yea, that'd be pretty swell. The only reason websites moved away from that was to "lower friction" - it's better for the consumers who end up buying the product if they know availability and pricing up front.
My statement was overly general and that's a fair criticism - however I do remember e-commerce in the early days of the web. That early web experience for me was that generally users were required to make an account (mostly to verify age and ability to pay) before they could interact with items or create a shopping cart. In that era the interaction of sales taxes and the internet were much more complicated and shipping times and costs much more variable. I know that when my father was buying train books he'd often need to go to conventions in other states to pick up items in person because sellers were afraid of getting scammed out of their shipping fees.
I suspect the answer is instead to establish two tax rate calculations:
One for in-person shopping (like VAT) -- you pay the tax according to local rates, but it's factored in already.
one for online shopping, ("E-VAT") -- you pay a national rate tax and the seller is responsible for paying gross sales based on that percentage to the state and the rest goes to the IRS.
Problem comes with the Sin Taxes that have been established. For instance, in Seattle, sugared drinks MAY incur a tax depending on what kind of store you bought it from (e.g. the normal costco has to tax it but the business costco doesn't), but that doesn't affect some folks and then there's tax-exempt organizations like churches that can have their sales tax waived and then there's states where sales taxes are a majority of the income is from sales tax but only if you're local and
Amazon in particular probably did a lot to normalize free (in country) shipping in many cases. But it's silly that there should be a sticker price that is the final price under all circumstances.
Mind you, I'm all for more up-front transparency in general, especially to the degree that comparison-shopping is inconsistent to the degree it displays or doesn't display often significant add-ons.
Nope. I hate when website use IP for anything, especially language selection. I travel all the time as well as use VPNs for work, and the idea that my IP represents anything other than what network Iâm connecting from is just lazy UX.
Yes letâs keep a shitty UX for most users because of a few abnormal users. Be honest, frequent travel and shopping over VPN is an edge case here. The vast majority of users are shopping and buying from home with a VPN.
Or better yet, give municipalities an incentive to stop layering a kinds of taxes. Just have a VAT and be done with it.
> Or better yet, give municipalities an incentive to stop layering a kinds of taxes. Just have a VAT and be done with it.
Switching our tax regime to VATs, effectively flattening 13,000+ sales tax jurisdictions down to 50, would be a monumental undertaking involving rethinking and reorganizing financing of literally everything below the federal level. And in the end it would solve a problem that is at best a minor annoyance to most Americans.
> The vast majority of users are shopping and buying from home with a VPN.
I bet that's wrong, and that a huge chunk of shopping is from cell phones that usually have an effectively random IP when they're not at their home location.
It would be interesting to see the numbers. I know for my wife and I, most shopping is done at home on phone or tablet and connected to our home wifi. And even shopping away from home is generally in the same county, so taxes are the same (or close enough for an up-front estimate).
Be honest, frequent travel and shopping over VPN is an edge case here.
Everyone is an edge case in some form. You, included.
Just have a VAT and be done with it.
This just illustrates that you don't understand the that taxes have multiple purposes, and why taxes are the way they are. Attend a few city council meetings.
Yeah, I see a lot of advice on here that websites should make some guesses and you can always correct them later if it turns out they're wrong.
That seems like terrible advice. Oh, the price is $X. And once you've entered all your info "just kidding." I'd much rather know there are some things not included up-front if they're not reasonably factored in.
Do you often order things for delivery at home while you're travelling? Then the price will change when you provide the delivery address â just like it does now.
Meanwhile, 99% of people will see the price they can expect to pay.
"Darn, sorry we can't make a deal. Hey look at all the people who need cars that are waiting!"
This is not as much of an upper hand as you think it is, often these shenanigans happen after sitting at the dealer for a couple hours while they do whatever it is they do. Do you value your time so little that you'll just walk out of a transaction over less than a 1% difference in cost?
The dealer knows how to play this game way better than you, if you walk into a dealership without having a plan to score a deal then you already lost
Yes, I have literally done exactly that thing and ended up with the dealer eating the price. The dealer has time and effort sunk into closing the deal, too, and theyâll almost always chose a bird in the hand.
And also-freaking-lutely would I walk instead of eating a BS charge. Sometimes it really is the principle of the thing. My principle is Iâm not paying a penny for something I didnât ask for. A dealership Iâd be caught dead doing business with will eat the bogus charges instead of losing a customer forever. Conversely, next time I need a Toyota, I have the business card of the guy Iâll buy it from and he doesnât even know it yet. He treated me well last time and his investment in that deal will keep paying him back.
Yeah. Last time I bought a car, at the last minute, it included "factory installed" extras that included a first aid kit for a car that wasn't built yet. I may or may not have actually walked (a couple of the options were actually useful) but I was "I'm not happy but I'll close the deal NOW if you add it to my trade-in" which they did.
I'm more ok with "hidden" taxes, because the business is supposed to just hand that over. If they're putting something on the receipt that says "tax" and its not associated with an actual government-applied tax, that's just fraud., we don't need special rules to address that (yet). Its not hidden in an attempt to trick you into buying something at a higher cost. Its hidden because calculating the taxes requires additional information from the user.
I'd be interested to see whether a movie theater is considered an event. Our local one charges a convenience fee when buying online because ... they can?
I wish they banned all mandatory add-ons. If I don't have the choice it should be part of the base price.
The touristic railroad near me advertises a price, and then slaps on a mandatory Fuel Surcharge and Historic Preservation Fee.
Excuse me? How can I compare what I'm going to spend my money on if you're just allowed to lie to me?
when you buy a ticket online, you are actually buying an option on the ticket, because you can go in and refund it at any time before the movie starts. the âconvenience feeâ is the option premium.
it would be fairer if this were opt-in. Some e commerce sites now allow you to pay a few extra dollars to have free returns, something similar would work for movies.
No, this is complicating things. A physical ticket can also be refunded prior to show time. It's not an option at all, it's just a fee. They are charging you to 1) pick your seat 2) not have to show up early 3) peace of mind knowing your spot is reserved - all of those things are conveniences in the purest sense of the word. In many cases, the fee is more closely related to a platform fee going to fandango or similar service.
Maybe some places operate that way, but I worked on payment systems for a few years and since then I figure most convenience fees come from credit card processing rates being passed on to the customer - at least that's how ours worked.
> How can I compare what I'm going to spend my money on if you're just allowed to lie to me?
You're not supposed to, that's the point. It's frankly shocking (and also not, but you know) how much businesses in America are allowed to bullshit you.
I signed on with a telco for high speed internet when we bought our house for $65 a month and by the time we got fiber and I could finally tell them to kick rocks, the bill had soared to nearly $200 for the exact same service over the course of 4 years. Why? Because they can, and go fuck yourself.
A hotel stay for a vacation was supposed to cost $851, but they demanded a $300 pre-authorization on top of that. Why? Because they can. I wasn't notified ahead of time, absolutely nowhere was this information given to me. And I could take that on fine, but why is this allowed? What if I wasn't so fortunate and was traveling by air, do I just sleep in a box because the hotel can't guarantee I'll be able to pay for $300 worth of room service I have no intention of buying?
I feel like this just happens everywhere now, I just expect it. I expect to get fucked over in one way or another, and on the one hand I'm sure it's my anxiety, but on the other hand there is so much expensive arbitrary nonsense that's just plunked down in front of me, and yeah, most of it I can handle fine, because I work in tech and make good wages. So I guess just fuck everyone who grew up at the income level I got, because I am fucking sure that my single mother trying her hardest as she was, wouldn't be able to get by if I was born like 15-20 years later than I was.
Edit: Oh and FUCK every politician who has ever farted out words something like "responsible consumption of healthcare" because sweet Jesus, healthcare billing is an utter nightmare. I don't think I have EVER, EVER in my entire life had some kind of medical event where I knew the costs going in that were then reflected afterwards. It's just all made the fuck up on the fly with no respect for the patients, when they are already stressed out and scared.
> You're not supposed to, that's the point. It's frankly shocking (and also not, but you know) how much businesses in America are allowed to bullshit you.
There's actually an administrative code in Washington that furniture (and maybe other) stores are only allowed to have a "Going out of business" sale _once a year_.
We could use one of those where I live. There was a furniture store off the side of the highway that over a period of like 4 years had at least 12 of them, and then would just change it's name each time.
Never bought anything from there since it seemed so incredibly sketchy. Then at last it went out of business properly and a U-Haul took over the space.
Well, at least we're now in a modern enlightened time when there's a standard FCC-required Broadband Facts "label" that can be referred to. It does make it easier to compare.
It still seems kind of new and I can't find one for Spectrum (my ISP) or I'd share it here myself, but: I pay exactly $59.95 per month, as the service is advertised in my area, and that's that. There are no itemized fees/taxes on my bill.
I don't remember the last time I had an ISP with weird fees associated with it -- it seems like it has had to have been around a decade now, at least.
(Cellular, too: My cheapskate all-you-can-eat cellular service costs me $35 per month, flat -- to the penny.)
My Internet provider charges $50 per month exactly, and even the taxes are included! How cool is that? They aren't doing that out of goodness of their heart though. It is due to competition from T-Mobile 5G internet, which also has this policy.
Iâm not very confident this is going to survive our next âpopulistâ administration. Whatever faults you can attribute to the current administration, the FTC has taken many actions that have been pro consumer over the past 4 years.
I wish that "Online Coupon Price Tags" in stores would also be banned. I'm talking about these yellow price tags that show lower than "Club" prices, which are only valid if you collect a coupon online.
Like FTC, I estimate that banning these would save U.S. consumers millions of hours they currently spend searching and clicking on pointless coupons on their phones before making purchases. It would also increase happiness, as it's extremely annoying to pay $20 extra, knowing that a lower price is available if only you spent ten minutes struggling with a store's website on your phone.
Whoever invented this is evil and is destroying happiness.
I'm less mad about those since it's basically just price discrimination. If you are price sensitive enough that you're willing to clip the coupon then you get the cheaper price.
those tags are working as intended - some people don't read the "online only" part, grab the item, assume the discount is applied at checkout, and end up paying full price. other people will download (and probably never uninstall) the spyware app and start feeding a juicy profitable data stream back to HQ.
because how are you ever going to stay in business doing something as niche as selling groceries without leaning hard into surveillance capitalism
> Four of the FTCâs five commissioners voted to approve the rule. Commissioner Andrew Ferguson, â who is President-elect Donald Trumpâs choice to replace Khan, was the one dissenting vote.
One republican commissioner voted with the rule, and Ferguson dissented based on lame duck rule making, not the merits, while agreeing that the FTC rule making was valid for businesses like tickets and short term lodging.
A lot of people probably weigh this too much. Forcing companies to have some skin in the game is good. But, in practice, if a company really wants to enforce a non-compete--even with consideration--it's probably not great unless you're in a position and want to take a sabbatical with substantially reduced compensation.
This is absolutely true and when I read my first non-compete my dad calmly explained how unenforceable they are due to hardship exceptions and lack of specificity. However, I had a very business minded father to ask and most people don't. Non-competes have been abused to scare uninformed employees into staying in positions they want to leave or as revenge for someone leaving.
The fact that they're so often unenforceable is probably a decent argument that they're an irrelevant complication of labor interactions that we don't need anyways. They only ever made sense with executives and those folks usually have large sums of money attached to their compliance.
The few months when I actually had a non-compete in place it was quite specific and didn't apply to me.
But, yeah, as a generic thing below the level of a CEO becoming the CEO of a direct competitor (in which case lawyers have presumably put specific contracts in place if they're competent), they don't make a lot of sense beyond NDAs in play. No properly-managed company was ever going to pay me a bunch of money to not work at a random company in the industry who was probably a partner anyway.
Not sure about going all the way back to 2012, but maybe they were more worried about the Mayan calendar? /s
But as far as under this administration, it seems like it took half the term to right the ship and get the leadership moving in the right direction. I think a second term would have been impressive.
Lina Khan is my second hero in life after Evariste Galois.
Even if they throw her out it wonât change what sheâs done: she put fear in the bellies of some truly terrible people who had almost forgot what the word ârestraintâ means.
Agree. Somewhat. But given that Elon Musk (who wants to shut down the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau completely) is likely to have a lot of say in these type of things, I think they'll forget that fear.
And the public will just accept arbitrary oppression with no limit?
No, the investor class will arrive at the negotiating table one way or another on a long enough timeline. It will be up to them if they still have legs to walk on.
The really scary fascists arenât stupid: Thiel and those guys are buying bunkers in New Zealand as fast as the checks clear. They understand something that the American public lost sight of for a moment: the American Public is terrifying, the American public is slow to wake but arbitrarily brutal once roused. Pushing the American public into a corner has been the last mistake of a great many men better than Elon Musk.
The fact that sensible and fair rules like this that favor the consumer don't get anywhere in the usa is proof of the regulatory capture by the corporate elite. The us isn't a democracy, because it isn't ruled by the people, it is ruled by the corporation and rich.
Americans keep voting for rich assholes who oppress them while telling them they are giving them freedom.
This is great if it gets rid of the "resort fee" or "urban fee" that I have had to pay at hotels. Happened last week. An extra $40 a night. It is almost impossible to refuse and find a new hotel right when you are checking in.
I used to work for a major airline many years ago. I remember when they introduced these crazy fees e.g., seat change fee. I was really disappointed then and soon left. I learned Don Carty then joined Dell who soon started their Byzantine ordering process. I was again disappointed. I still buy Dell monitors because I like them but I never buy from their website.
I remember an episode of the TV show Happy Days when the restaurant owner started charging money to use the toilet stall. It was a sad joke and many businesses are following suit.
Gotta love that TicketMaster convenience fee that is for online ticket purchases --- which you still have to pay if you get your ticket at the door, because that is also convenient!
Count the service charge toward what you wouldâve tipped.
Wait staff reading this: bosses at restaurants like this are stealing from you if that doesnât go straight to you. I tip very well, but Iâm not tipping twice. And yes, if itâs a âservice chargeâ, thatâs the same as saying âtipâ from the customerâs perspective.
Would boycott get a chance? The honest restaurants bragging "NO FEES" would gather more customers and the others follow.
Wondering, is there already US places that works without tips like in most other places ? (Owner pays a decent salary to its employees, include that in all products they sell and donât expect tips)
SF has something called Healthy SF where employers have to offer health insurance plans, or pay into a city-managed health account. I think the last time I looked, for a lot of businesses, it's basically a $2.25/hr raise for your employees.
edit: The best part is, if your employees don't use the money (maybe they don't know about it or don't have any health care expenses), the business can eventually reclaim it...
The restaurant association balked at this, and encouraged businesses to list out the increased cost as a separate line item on the receipt, instead of raising menu prices, basically raising a middle finger and saying "see what you idiots voted for, now you pay for it!" I don't know why I'd be mad that I have to pay for someone's health care. That's sort of how it works, doesn't it?
Since then, it has taken on a life of its own. Some places call it a health care surcharge. Others call it a SF surcharge, or a cost adjustment, or inflation fee. It's not a tax, it's not a service charge, it's not anything but whatever arbitrary number the business wants to charge without raising their menu price. And thus, it's taxable.
Not likely; sales tax is extremely complicated in the US. There are 13,000 sales tax jurisdictions, and many of them have different and incompatible rules for things like sales tax nexus.
I think legitster is suggesting that the sticker price on the product should be the price paid, rather than a uniform sales tax code. If the seller knows what to charge the buyer, then they know what they need to put on the sticker.
Local retailers would oppose this in very strong terms as a thumb on the scale in favor of online retailers.
Online retailers would presumably still be able to show pricing before knowing a shipping address, so their pricing would be pre-tax. That would make the apparent price differential even greater, and on every item.
I think this would make the marketplace less clear for consumers.
Online retailers could be required to use the best available estimate of the user's location to calculate the tax, like they do for ads.
So if they are logged in with an address on file, it could be that. If not, they could use geolocation, with a note that the tax is estimated. And let the user input a location in a box to show the exact tax.
> they could use geolocation, with a note that the tax is estimated
So we'd go from the current regime where the displayed price is wrong to another regime where the displayed price is wrong? Allegedly, something like 40%+ of Americans use VPNs. They would pretty much always see the wrong price.
In practice, the ramification of this would be that your local indie retailers (where we are much less likely to be persistently logged in) would be forced to incorrectly show higher prices to a set of people, while the giant retailers who already have your billing info can show you 100% accurate pricing all the time, regardless of VPN.
Sounded off to me, but I wasn't able to find a better number when I looked. Maybe it's counting work computers where the stack is maintained by IT staff?
Oddly enough, the average EU consumer has no problem understanding that the label price is the full price of a purchase, while online prices might include extra stuff such as delivery.
Maybe you're just less intelligent than the average consumer and need some more protection? Or is it something else?
> Maybe you're just less intelligent than the average consumer
I'm not one to police tone, but really? Did it make you feel better to say that?
> is it something else?
Yes, the something else is that you're missing the point that my comment was specifically about the disparity in the prices large online retailers would be able to display (e.g. without sales tax) versus what offline retailers would display (with sales tax).
If Amazon and a local retailer are both aiming for the same $1,000 for an item net of tax, this would mean that Amazon could display $1,000 as the price while my local retailer would have to list it for (say) $1,100. I don't think local retailers would like that very much, even though the consumer would end up paying $1,100 either way. You may disagree.
No they cannot. Taxes are not uniform. Walmart probably won't deal with this, but in many states business (read farmers) do not pay sales tax on some items (read likely to be used on a farm) and so stores that want to sell to business will have the ability to verify you are a business to give that discount.
It is worse for online where until you log in they have no clue what taxes will apply. If you are buying a gift for someone in a different area I don't know what tax rules apply but there is good odds they won't know until you get to the shipping information what the real taxes are.
> but in many states business (read farmers) do not pay sales tax on some items (read likely to be used on a farm)
The legislation in most of europe clearly handles this - the price displayed is for the intended customer. If you go into B&Q (home depot equivalent), you'll see prices including sales tax. If you go next door to a timber merchant none of the prices have sales tax included. If you're a business, you don't pay the sales tax. The businesses know what their taxes are, and are required to have accurate accounts anyway. For those that are maybe numerically challenged - they'll never pay more than they see on the sticker.
> It is worse for online where until you log in they have no clue what taxes will apply.
Enter your shipping address to see pricing. Exactly the same as it is now. Give an estimate based on IP. Exactly how it works in Europe, which has the same problem.
The issue with online sales is real, but customers exempt from sales tax could just have their final price lowered. That would be the opposite of the current situation. Since there are many fewer tax-exempt sales, and tax-exempt buyers are presumably more sophisticated and less price-sensitive, this would be a net win for customers.
My favorite example of this lunacy is the restaurant nearby that sells pies. If they box your pie for you to take home, it's a grocery item and not taxed. If they give you utensils to eat it in the store, it's a restaurant meal and therefore taxed.
They literally can't know the price until you tell them whether you'd like a fork with it.
Now, this restaurant works around it by having both prices listed, but I can imagine a million freaking variants of that for an online sale: "you have to pay our local taxes, but almost maybe yours, unless you check out on a Sunday between noon and 5PM, which is a tax holiday on your block (but not your neighbors' across the road), so understand that the price may change between when you add it to your cart and when you click the 'pay' button."
> And if you can do that, then you might as well print it on the price tag (along with pre-tax price if you want).
Fun fact: sales tax rates are not stable. Our state publishes quarterly tax changes at the county level; city-level changes are presumably too numerous for the state to publish in the same format.
Inclusive pricing can obviously be done in-store, but it also more or less ensures that some of the items in your store will have incorrect prices some of the time.
Bullshit. First, you absolutely CAN JUST PUT TWO PRICES on a price tag. Moreover, business customers (in a grocery shop, yeah right) can just get a discount at a point of sale.
Not a trick, just they get their income from other sources / taxes. But we're specifically talking about knowing the final price you will pay, in advance, which requires knowing the sales tax.
WTF! Definitely paid corporate shill. Legalized corruption in the USA. "A judge in Texas blocked a rule that would cap credit card late fees, and an appeals court in New Orleans blocked a requirement that airlines disclose baggage and other fees upfront."
This is awesome. There's more to do, but it's a step in the right direction. This law should really apply to all merchants in all industries, as the original 2023 proposal stated (allegedly). Still, I'll take it.
Great! My wife was reading me ticket prices for an event on Ticketmaster yesterday, I kept telling her she needs to add them to the cart and start checkout to know the real price. She did just that and to my surprise the price didn't change at all!
Itâs a start. Iâm bummed at how narrowly scoped this is. When the RFC period was open I wrote in to highlight how apartments charge surprise pet rent fees that donât appear until the application process.
No, the reason they tack on the fee as a "tax" is literally to confuse and otherwise mislead the public to the true cost of the product they're buying, or mislead where the money is directed. they're buying from. If you believe in the Tennant's of capitalism at all, then you must have clear price representation.
Isn't Airbnb a good example of this? In some locations you have to open each listing to get the true price and it's a huge waste of time. In locations, what you see on the map is the real value, cleaning and other, fees included.
I wish sales taxes would be added - some cities charge very large taxes on hotel rooms and so it might be worth staying in a hotel not far away with more reasonable taxes.
Market actors are allowed to charge whatever they want. Price controls are super bad. It's not the role of the state to mandate a specific price. It is the role of the state to make sure prices are fair and transparent. Deception cannot be tolerated in an efficient market.
And that comparison is important - when junk fees are allowed more honest companies suffer because consumers might shop around and end up choosing the option that is actually more expensive. Those consumers might be on page 12/13 of a form and just accept the fee to avoid the hassle - or they may assume everyone (including what looked like a more expensive competitor) is baking the fees in late in the process and not bother investigating deeper.
Maybe. If they document how dirty the room was after you leave, and how clean it was before hand they can get away with this. Generally smoke smell is the only thing they would bother doing this for though. If you just leave the normal mess behind they shouldn't be charging extra.
Even the most fundamentalist of free market fundamentalists should be cheering transparency in pricing. The price signal works best when it's not obfuscated.
A recent WizzAir flight was advertised (when I searched for the route on their website) for âŹ21. I rejected all optional extras, and that was the total price I paid.
No checked luggage, probably only a small cabin bag that fitted under the seat in front, no priority boarding, no seat selection.
It's a budget service, but the advertised prices aren't deceptive.
Trust me, you got lucky, they "randomly" selected passengers with those kind of bags for inspection due to measures, 1mm above? charged! Emphasis on randomly, because the pattern was simple: foreigners? charged, locals? go on. We've saw a poor guy squeeze the hell out of his backpack to no avail, it fitted the measuring box, still, charged because "you had to squeeze it"; guess what, plenty of room under the seat, the guy could put two of them. On me? bag had wheels, foreigner, automatically selected for inspection, took the wheels away, still charged because "it had wheels first". I've flew a dozen companies, not even Ryanair, the low of the lowest treats passengers like this.
A significant difference here is that the airline fees are ostensibly optional. You could, in theory, fly Spirit with nothing except the clothes on your back and they wouldn't charge you extra. But with event ticket sales and the like, there is often no possible way to avoid the fees. That means there's a much stronger argument for requiring that the fees be rolled into the price.
This shouldn't be controversial. FTC isn't banning these fees, it is only requiring merchants to disclose the fees. Why would anyone be against that?
Another good rule is click-to-cancel. Just a couple of days ago I logged into my Dish Network account to cancel it (after they hiked prices). There is no way to cancel online. There is no way to cancel via chat. You have to call. As soon as you call you're told the wait time is over 45 minutes. There is no call back option. Why should a consumer have to be on the phone for 45 minutes to cancel? (Typically they will drop the call after 45 minutes and you have to call again.) If you call Dish to sign up service the wait time is 0 minutes: they answer immediately. If you then tell that you're actually calling to cancel, they forward you to the cancellation number with the wait. This is an abusive business practice, and banning it should not be controversial.
Dish is evil.
Years ago when signed up with them I opted to pay the extra service for local tv channels, which required an andditional antenna to install.
For some reason the installer couldnât fit it securely on our house, and said to call Dish to remove the service since we cannot receive it.
Dish refused to remove the local service! They said since we signed a contract we were stuck paying for it even though they couldnât fit the antenna.
I pointed out in a hundred different ways that the contract also required them to provide a service which they are not providing so we shouldnât have to pay.
All of my attempts to reason with them were ignored, and their call staff refused to escalate to their manager.
Long story short we had to pay for twelve months for something they couldnât provide to us.
Literally the minute the contract was up we cancelled (it was easier to cancel back then).
I would never ever go near this company again.
Isn't this what small claims court is for?
Terms and Conditions usually spell out the dispute process. You may find out that disputes need to go to arbitration court in a different state.
So now likely hundreds (or more) of individuals have to not only wait on hold forever, but have to learn the process of and actually go through with filing a small claim? That there is recourse is beside the point when it is mired in bureaucracy (not to mention taking days off to show up to court, etc).
I'm surprised I haven't yet heard of companies who would handle this for you, like there are e.g. for handling the process of getting compensation when an airline screws up scheduling or loses baggage, etc. I'm guessing there isn't enough money to be won there for them to be able to survive off a percentage of it.
A hypothetical company that can do this, would also be capable of handling much more lucrative class action suits.
Class action suits may be easier, if only arbitration was opt-in-by-default or easier to opt out of.
it only takes a few hits from lawsuits for the companies to fix the process.
Customers should be able to bill them for wasted time. If you are calling to cancel you can bill an hourly rate. Make it some multiple of minimum wage. Then services will pop up to have someone call and cancel for you, then bill the company for that time. Zero effort on the consumer side and suddenly wait times will drop. The problem is that there is no incentive on the company side to have easy cancellation or any other "negative" customer service. If they get billed a hundred dollars for keeping you on the line for 2 hours they will suddenly care a lot.
There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything.
Ironically, that inherent dysfunction is the main reason to suspect that won't happen. But politically, every regulation as automatically partisan, even when it has overwhelming support.
> There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything.
(At least some of) the agencies brought this on themselves with their abuse of the goodwill/benefit of the doubt previously afforded to them. Most flagrant has been the ATF, for one example constantly redefining machine guns or pistol braces, turning millions of citizens into felons with no oversight beyond drawn out and expensive court cases against them.
I never liked the smell of this power being afforded to agencies in the abstract, even for the "good guys" at the CDC or Department of the Interior. It's too rife for abuse. Federal regulations (whether you call it a law or a rule, the party van is coming if you break them) are supposed to be hard to pass. We once needed an amendment to ban alcohol before we forgot the definitions of interstate and commerce, but if my understanding is correct, under Chevron deference the DEA could have decided to schedule it without even asking congress.
Your understanding is not correct. Chevron deference never meant agencies can just make up and pass law; it was a legal doctrine which merely stated that in places where the law is ambiguous (say a law declares water must be clean of pollutants, or bans pistol braces) that courts should look at any guidance from relevant agencies for guidance, since supposedly they should know more about the subject than the courts. It never allowed agencies to circumvent congress or prevented congress from further clarifying law. For example, the DEA doesnât have the power to schedule drugs due to chevron, Congress includes provisions for the AG to reschedule drugs, which the AG historically has delegated to the DEA, the point being this was a power explicitly granted by congress. While it may sound nice to you right now that the Supreme Court did away with chevron due to your gripes with the ATF, now the definitions of machine guns or pistols or anything else are up to the whims of any judge in any jurisdiction, which could be better or, given that judges likely have even less knowledge of the subject than the ATF, probably worse and more inconsistent.
> Chevron deference never meant agencies can just make up and pass law
Not on it's own, no. The bigger culprit there is the erosion of the nondelegation doctrine. But Chevron aggravated the problem by allowing agencies to stretch their authority beyond what even congress intended with little possibility of legal challenge.
Interpreting the law is and should be the role of the courts, not the role of the agencies that that law is supposed to be governing. It'd be like if we passed a law intended to regulate insurance companies, and the courts decided to give deference to the insurance company's interpretation of that law because "they're the experts on insurance".
Is there a well functioning large country that doesn't effectively govern this way?
The US isn't well functioning its just rich
This is coming into my work life with web accessibility: The DoJ published a rulemaking in April that filled the many, many gaps in the existing law that determines if the government is violating the ADA when creating websites, etc.
What came before this was at least 15 years of tort action, a patchwork of civil rulings across a wide variety of jurisdictions, and generally, confusion and ambiguity. Not the stuff of efficient government.
From my perspective, this rulemaking is pretty close to ideal. I did not dream of getting such a clear, detailed direction from a federal agency. I think my jaw may have literally dropped as I read through it. I think the web accessibility is an interesting example, because it's not a bloated bureaucracy harassing some fishermen, it's an agency trying to prevent the government from violating your civil rights.
So, is the idea that Congress would have accomplished this instead? I just can't imagine that happening.
yeah because Congress now have to become experts at everything: from definition of machine guns, to ADA guidelines. Afterall, if Congress didn't specifically pass the law to the detail, it doesn't exist.
The sheer stupidity of that argument is mind-blowing. When you have a government agency with dedicated technical resources, but you will rather a bunch of couple hundred of people with different backgrounds make specific rules about everything. That's just madness
That's because it's not actually intended to make the regulations better. It's intended to make it impossible for regulatory agencies to do their jobs effectively, without outright legislating them out of existence, because the people backing it believe that without effective regulation they and their allies will be more easily able to enrich themselves at the public's expense.
It's because that is the constraints that the U.S. Constitution places on our form of Federal government. The Congress passes laws (and controls the money), the Executive implements the law, and the Courts interpret the law. My lay understanding is that Chevron shifted too much power from the Congress and the Courts to the administrative agencies in the Executive branch. It seemed like a "good idea" at the time but over time the abuses became apparent and this Supreme Court reigned it back in towards the balance of powers required by the Constitution.
If congress says "companies can't pollute and the EPA determines what is a pollutant" then the EPA is implementing a law congress passed. That's not against any constitutional constraints.
What abuses
Machine guns?
The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it.
That being said, bump stocks are a simple enough concept that banning them is stupid. We should quite our obsession over machine guns--there are few situations where it even matters.
The problem with it going through congress is that it will always be political rather than scientific. The agencies don't do a good job, but a lot of that is because of garbage they are saddled with by congress (think of the machine guns--the basic problem is that the legal and practical definitions are out of sync) and a lot of it is because politics manages to get in anyway.
How about a middle ground: agencies can make rules but they must give their reasoning and supporting evidence--and anyone can challenge such in court. You can't go after the ruling but if you can knock out it's supports it goes away. This would cut both ways--exempt something from a more general ruling and the reason for the exemption can be challenged. (And I'd like to see the same thing for laws.)
> The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it.
The part where it breaks down is pointing at a specific piece that enables automatic fire and calling that piece a "machine gun", even if it's just a tiny piece of metal or a specially-tied shoelace.
If it carries the "machine gun" ability with it, it's like ... The Enchanted Seer of Automatic Firing.
It turns a 'plain gun' into a machine gun, and there are almost no other ways to do that. So it seems like calling it "a machine gun" is reasonable from linguistic perspective. #wittgenstein
No.
The seers have been banned. I don't think anyone thinks they're not machine gun parts.
What's been going on is the ATF has been going after a variety of methods of circumventing the concept--means of using the recoil to "pull" the trigger without the operator actually pulling it. The result sure acts like a machine gun, albeit an unreliable and inaccurate one. The problem is that it's simply too easy to do, they are fighting a hopeless battle.
My understanding is the same problem applies to silencers--plenty of filters out there that just happen to be of the right size to function as silencers. And there isn't even any reason for the rules against silencers. They aren't like Hollywood, it's still loud but below the threshold of hearing damage.
I don't think the "almost no other ways to do that" part holds up.
Yes, other countries manage. Restricting gun ownership rather than machine gun ownership is one approach.
I think the machine gun issue is mostly settled. But there is a lot of controversy lately about what is a short barreled rifle (which requires a special federal permit). I don't know the specifics but the laws have been changed after people purchased their guns, such that if they were caught with them they would be in violation of serious gun laws (essentially as serious as having a machine gun without a permit)
Thereâs always one part I find worth adding about government being ripe for abuse.
Everything is ripe for abuse.
âââ-
Right now, agencies are the defensive structures. Corporations which own media or parties that are effectively corporations - are the threat.
One of the specific defenses thatâs employed by private forces is reduction in trust of agencies.
ââ
All systems are vulnerable. Itâs a question of relative vulnerability.
"constantly redefining machine guns or pistol braces"
Pistol braces was struck down not on second amendment grounds, but because the ATF failed to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act, specifically failing the logical outgrowth test. They proffered a comment period and then did a switch when publishing the final rule.
Similar shenanigans were afoot with the Trump area bump stock ban, which was ruled against by the Supreme Court itself in Garland v. Cargill. I think that had to do with the agency exceeding its authority beyond what the statute specifically specifies. In laymans terms, the legal details were not ambiguous enough to justify the conclusion that the agency came to stretching the statute through their interpretation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act
> There is a move afoot
Who is behind this move? What individuals, and what politicians? By what legal means is this happening? I've literally never heard of anything like this before - without further details, this is just political flame-baiting.
> Who is behind this move? What individuals, and what politicians? By what legal means is this happening?
The supreme court. The removal of Chevron Deference this year means that the courts have given themselves huge amounts of power over any administrative decision that isn't specifically regulated by congress (rather than the prior stance which was to presume that agency decisions were reasonable interpretations of the legislation unless there was clear evidence to the contrary).
Federal agencies now have oversight from the judicial branch. That's a big check on their power.
> now
They always have?
Much less.
Yes. Previously the court had to prove that something an agency did went against the mandate congress gave it, to strike it down. Now it can just strike it down for no reason. This is useful in times when republicans control the courts and democrats control the executive.
This is not an accurate description of that decision.
Agencies no longer get special privileges in interpreting the scope of what Congress delegated to them.
Within the scope of what Congress delegated to them, they still have an much power and discretion as ever.
There was an argument about noncompetes and the FTC in front of a Federal judge recently.
The judge said, "Even as the agency has the power, I don't feel sufficiently convinced by their argument and will block it anyway."
That doesn't sound like they have as much power in their delegated responsibilities if an arbitrary judge says "... and you also have to convince me personally, even though you're entitled to do it."
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-chevron-regulations...
Chevron is irrelevant here and does not support the argument being made, unless you're moving the goalposts.
You shouldn't assume others are acting in bad faith when the much more likely explanation is you're just not paying attention.
Three major developments from the courts in this direction have been:
- The overturning of Chevron gave courts the power to interpret portions of laws written by subject matter experts, instead of those experts themselves.
- The big questions doctrine has allowed the courts to decide when the legislature has deligated too much power.
- Cornerpost has removed the statue of limitations for challenge policies and rules out in place by agencies.
These together clearly paint a picture. Any policy can be challenged (in any venue, allowing the plaintiff to pick their venue). This allows policies in place for decades to be challenged and brought to the supreme court. The most recent court has adopted the major questions doctrine, allowing them to strike down any policy they feel pertain to "issues of major political or economic significance." (no they didn't define it more than that). Or, if they can't make that argument, they can interpret the law to strike down the policy due to the overturning of Chevron.
We've seen an unprecedented shift of power to the supreme court in the last few years. They're using the disfunction in the legislature as an opening to gain power. Which is scary considering it's a group of 9 unelected people with lifetime appointments.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_questions_doctrine
https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/corner-post-inc-...
The Romanian supreme court just decided to block the presidential elections. They might have had reasons, but they definitely didn't have the mandate, yet they decided it nevertheless and because they are supreme nobody can challenge them. I'm sure the US supreme court (and more) is warming up to this concept.
You aren't listening. Read about the reasons they did that, before concluding they did it for no reason.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13771
The politicians on the supreme court and while the case was pretty recent the move to limit it dates back a long time before that
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...
> By what legal means is this happening?
Article I, section 1 of the Constitution: âAll legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.â
It doesnât say, âCongress may delegate its legislative Powers to the Executive.â Arguably, the âshallâ language forbids that! Article I, section 8 does give the Congress the authority to pass laws necessary and proper to execute its regulation of interstate commerce (among other things), but ⌠itâs not necessary to delegate legislative power in order to execute the law.
Agencies require masters and Phds amongst their experts.
Those people need to be paid, and their services accounted for.
Those outreach and comms programs also need to be handled.
Congress canât add 300 days into 24 hours. So this is a reading of law kinda like an absolutist readings of a text.
>There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything.
It's hard to argue with this in principal. The rules as law BS has been a band-aid over dysfunction. It needs to go. It'll hurt in the short term but should be more sustainable in the long term. That people will get more angry at congress for doing nothing is icing on the cake.
> That people will get more angry at congress for doing nothing is icing on the cake.
I want to be optimistic about this. In practice it seems that the strategy created by McConnel to block any legislation at all has been doing/tricking the voter really well. As he predicted, credit for anything good goes to the current admin while anything bad also gets blamed on the current admin. I can see a likely scenario where "people getting more angry" will only make this strategy to block everything work even better. I hope I am wrong and the "nuance" that congress exists and isn't controlled by the president will finally get into people heads. I also hope that once it gets into their heads, the conclusion won't be that a authoritarian dictator is needed.
I agree with you: frustrated by a Congress that canât pass any legislation, the one thing it doesnât seem like anyone is willing to try is to consider compromises. Everyone seems fully convinced that if only the 50% (or more) of the voters who disagree with them would just drop dead, we could fix everything. And as a result, voters punish lawmakers, who horse trade and negotiate. Even though thatâs the only way things used to get done until everything broke 10 or 15 years ago.
Compromising in the current congress:
"Let's meet in the middle" says the unjust man.
You take a step towards him. He takes a step back.
"Let's meet in the middle" says the unjust man.
> It'll hurt in the short term
There are decades of rules in the federal register. How long do you imagine it will take the legislative branch to patch them?
Go skim some of them, and see if you feel the same way afterward:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/search?conditions%...
It's very easy to argue against when the people that most want to violate the rules have congress in their back pocket. I personally prefer being actually able to breathe the air and not work 70 hours a week with no benefits.
Dish is terrible. After my mom passed away, they were one of the few things that my Dad had trouble cancelling. Even with a copy of her death certificate, my Dad could not get the service cancelled. He just ended up throwing the bills (and their equipment) away.
I think they went bankrupt, so hope that's some consolation. I heard that an attempt to buy them by DTV got rejected on antitrust. But in the article it said they went bust
Yup, same experience here 3 months trying to make them understand "he is dead".
We left their crap in a room for ~6 months total at the advise of his estate lawyer. Eventually they did accept that he was dead and canceled the account as well as sent a box to send the equipment back.
They got their equipment back after it had all had an unexpected encounter with a hammer. Never heard a peep about it.
I'm told you can just write the account number to cancel on a brick and throw it through their window. Might be worth a try.
It's really basic contract law stuff.
Here in Sweden, if the amount isn't clearly presented, there's no agreement to pay the specified amount, so there's no contract and no obligation to pay-- an agreement becomes binding because of the reasonable expectation of a party on the counterparty.
I don't understand American contract law, since I even see ideas like changing agreements, which are completely contrary to the very notion of a contracts as I understand it, so it's nice that something is done about these strange practices.
I don't understand how it's come to this point though. That courts have been willing to tolerate things that aren't in the contract (i.e. changes to contracts), provisions that aren't clear, etc., and complex and strange provisions even in contracts of adhesion and things presented to consumers.
Mostly it comes down to the fees being presented at the end rather than at the beginning. You have to follow the process through to the end to figure out what it would cost which makes price comparisons much harder.
Occasionally this is unavoidable--shipping charges. If they simply pass through what UPS charges, fine. Otherwise, they should be listed up front.
Agree to both. And both are incredibly easy problems to solve. For the first just have a law that says:
> Any advertised price must include all mandatory taxes and fees. No exceptions.
For the second just have a law that says:
> An end user must be allowed to use the same method to cancel as they used to sign up for the service. No exceptions. Additionally, an end user cannot be required to perform more manual actions to cancel than was required to sign up. No exceptions.
No one should be against this except greedy corporations. Easily solved, common sense rules that already have working examples in the real world. 1 is already the law in Netherlands and Australia and these countries arenât falling over from the undue burden placed on businesses.
Iâll end with: two cornerstones of a free market are price transparency and the ability/mobility to switch services when a better competing offering emerges. Not having legislation like above to protect those values is anti capitalistic
But what's a mandatory fee?
Free airfare to Hawaii!
Fee for paying by cash: $1000 Fee for paying by check: $1100 Fee for paying by credit card: $1050 Fee for middle seat: $200 Fee for window seat: $300 Fee for aisle seat: $250
Note that no fee on this list is mandatory because you always have other options.
To me that is totally fine. If there are electives, then elective them. Fix the mandatory ones first. Like the âresort feeâ hotels charge. Or âcleaning feesâ.
It becomes trickier when the fee is elective, but a significant part of the advertisement. Southwest Airlines complaining about having to advertise their fares, which come with two bags included, alongside other airlines who donât include any bags comes to mind. I think there is probably some world where elective fees are included as well though this seems more nebulous.
However, letâs not let the perfect be the enemy of the good: Even just including everything that is compulsory in the base price itself, including taxes, would be a massive improvement to the status quo. Fixing this elective fee ambiguity would be a next step
Did you...actually read what they wrote there?
The (hypothetical) airfare was listed as "free", but it was impossible to end up paying less than $1200 for it.
The point being that even if you have a choice between several fees (making none of them "mandatory" by a narrow reading), you're still paying something beyond the advertised base price.
The logical good-faith rule in a case like this would be that you must advertise at least the minimum price anyone would end up paying based on the available "fee choices".
I'd go a little farther and say that if there are impractical scenarios to avoid the fee it still must be included. (Say, no fee if you pay the fare in Timbuktu.) Advertise it based on the 95th percentile of what actually happens.
So what happens when you buy that ticket and don't pay any of the fees? If you get taken to Hawaii then they're in the clear. If they won't take you without you paying the fee then I guess the fee wasn't optional after all.
Buy the ticket how? Look at the fees for paying--you can't actually buy the ticket without paying for it.
Of course it's controversial.
They do this to increase profits.
A certain portion of the population is pro-profit at virtually any cost.
It might seem like Dish employees wake up every day and say, "What can we do today to screw our customers even more?" But usually they're just trying to find ways to make more money.
>It might seem like Dish employees wake up every day and say, "What can we do today to screw our customers even more?"
Made the mistake of buying a boost mobile sim this year. It was âexpiredâ upon opening it. Retailer refused to refund it.
Having not learned my lesson yet, I went elsewhere and ripped it open to check the expiration date this time before I bought it.
Well âitâs prepaid for 90 days and comes with 35 gigsâ it says on the card.
Go to activate it, it puts a further $100 on my credit card and congratulates me for activating my 30 gig service plan.
Hokey frauds.
Be glad you werenât on Ting.
What crap did Ting pull on you?
Their aggressive data throttling always rubbed me the wrong way, along with the Extreme data pricing, considering it was on Sprint's terrible network.
Dish knows their satellite TV business is on the way out. Their strategy is to maximize the present value of that business by retaining and squeezing as many of those customers as much as possible, slowing the decline and pulling as much money out of that vertical for as long as they still have it, so that they can reinvest that cash into new verticals with more promise.
The ironic part of all of this, I would have pay linear TV services if it was cheaper - 50 bucks a month for the whole house, and I suspect they could have 30%+ more customers.
It doesn't solve the problem that "the line must constantly go up". A steady revenue and constant returns isn't good enough, apparently and in the case of dish, it will be declining revenue over time no matter what they do.
> It might seem like Dish employees wake up every day and say, "What can we do today to screw our customers even more?"
Shit flows downhill. Their owner, Charlie Ergan, wakes up every day thinking of new ways to defraud the government with DISH and Echostar: https://nypost.com/2024/03/22/us-news/doj-moved-to-dismiss-3...
I usually complain about his spectrum squatting with DISH, but there's so much more if you dig a little.
> "What can we do today to screw our customers even more?" But usually they're just trying to find ways to make more money.
But you repeat yourself.
The directors and shareholders, not the employees. They only want to get paid.
> A certain portion of the population is pro-profit at virtually any cost.
This is a mischaracterization of the criticism.
Suppose we all agree that Dish sucks and making it hard to cancel is malicious. A rule is proposed to require customers to be able to cancel any subscription on the vendor's website. Is that a completely reasonable rule that will have no negative consequences?
A lot of small businesses don't even have a website, or if they do it's fully static content that just provides information about their offering and if you want it you call them. Some two-person landscaping service doesn't have an IT department to implement this and having to call them to cancel isn't a real problem because they actually answer their phone.
And if this was only one rule they would just suck it up and pay someone a thousand bucks to make them a website where you can cancel, but it's not. So when you propose yet another piece of red tape they have to take food off their table to make go away, they line up with rotten tomatoes, and anyone proposing to pare some of it back gets their vote.
Click to cancel does not mean exactly what the name implies. It means cancellation must be as easy as signup [1]. In your example, signup is not a click away, so the cancellation process need not be. Itâs a very reasonable position.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/...
To be fair, the name "click to cancel" does not, in fact, imply that cancellation must be as easy as signup in cases where signup is not a click away. A name that would better imply that would be something like "symmetric cancellation", or "cancellation parity". However, that would be less catchy to the public than "click to cancel".
> A rule is proposed to require customers to be able to cancel any subscription on the vendor's website.
Except that's not the proposed rule. The way this works in California (and the way the rule the FTC recently published works, I believe) is that a business is required to allow customers to cancel "in the same medium" that they subscribed. That doesn't require anyone to start running a website.
The rest of your post is just arguing against something that's not even happening.
> a business is required to allow customers to cancel "in the same medium" that they subscribed.
But then you're not really fixing it anymore. "Must be able to cancel directly via website" (i.e. without waiting for a customer service rep) might have been useful. Require only the same medium and soon Dish has both sign up and cancellation happen via a customer service chat window on their website, but if you choose sign up the chat has representatives/acceptance bots appear instantaneously to approve your sign up, whereas cancellation has a four hour queue and if you fail to wiggle your mouse every 30 seconds you get timed out.
You have to come up with a rule strict enough to defeat the corporate lawyers without making it so complicated or comprehensive that it puts significant compliance costs on smaller entities. Which is really hard to do, with the result that most of the rules that actually pass don't do that, which is why people get irked.
One of the better ways to actually solve this is to have some fairly significant entity size thresholds (e.g. thousands of employees and millions of customers) and then exempt all smaller entities but fasten the larger entities to the wall with red tape. If you could get the regulators to consistently do that. But because that's typically not what happens, people continue to be discontented.
As-is, it works very well in California. I had never experienced the resistance you imagined during the 3-4 years I lived in California, and regularly cancelled subscriptions that were notoriously hard in other states
California passed the click to cancel law this year. They passed a different law trying to make it easier to cancel subscriptions in 2018. The need for them to revisit it implies that the original one wasn't working.
Corporations act strategically. They typically don't immediately thwart new laws because the coalition that passed them is still intact and would try to do something about it. So they wait a minute, maybe take the time to buy some more legislators, before testing the fences again.
If people have forgotten about them by then you lose, and if people haven't forgotten about them by then, California passes the 2024 law and you lose the other way. Because they pass the new law in addition to rather than instead of the old one, even though the old one has stopped working, so you have a ratchet of ever-increasing compliance costs that also apply to all the companies that were never doing anything wrong to begin with but still have to hire lawyers to evaluate their activities against an entire bookshelf of rules to see if any of them require something they're not doing.
No timers, no human interaction. And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.)
> No timers, no human interaction.
Is there something in the proposed rule that actually says this? And if so, what happens to the small business that does cancellations over email/phone and therefore requires human interaction?
> And if the process takes time (there are times I think confirmations are warranted) once that's been done the cancellation takes place at the time of your original request. (Which you can screenshot.)
The issue isn't that you care if the cancellation happens at 9AM or 9PM, it's that if you have to wait twelve hours to speak to a representative you give up before reaching the point you can make the request.
You make the rule such that if you can sign up for a service on a website you can also cancel it said website. Now your hypothetical landscaping company is safe
> banning it should not be controversial
for many people, any kind of regulation that restricts companies abilities to make money, regardless of the consequences for average citizen, is "wasteful and discourages innovation". Elon would like to get rid of the FTC altogether for that reason, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was set up to help protect users from scammy behavior like this.
so yeah, don't hold your breath for the next 4 years (or longer if Elon manages to buy the next election too)
I revisited Henry Hazlittâs economics in one lesson and in the chapter on labour unions, he actually is fairly moderate provided that unions stick to non-price distorting policies.
Making wage information more accessible to workers being a policy he- an Austrian School economist- supports.
This government ruling falls under that class of policies IMO. It makes prices much more available to consumers and does not on first inspection threaten to distort supply and demand.
The problem with click-to-cancel is that there should be confirmations built into important cancellations.
But require it to be practical to do online, with no delays and no requirement about when relative to renewals.
You can always cancel any contract by certified mail.
My preferred way to cancel these types of services is to close or pause the card they're charging. If you use a virtual card service like Privacy.com, this is easy, if you don't, then maybe not so much. But using virtual cards for everything you can is typically a good idea anyway, imo.
But then that becomes unpaid bills and they send you to collections.
You can dispute debt in collections by requesting proof of the debt. The consumer protections in that area (debt collections) are quite a bit more developed than any consumer protections about intentional procedural inefficiency when cancelling service.
you will end up with damaged credit. The only negative on my credit report is from a verizon phone I bought from a verizon store (actually ended up not being Verizon owned store,) which i returned within the 7 days return fee, even paid re-stocking fee. But which the store credits me for having returned it later than I did, which allowed Verizon charged me 1 month service fee, which I never got a bill or email even though verizon had both, until it showed up on credit as collection. Nothing I did could get it off.
If you never actually took the steps to cancel your contract won't they be able to prove your debt via the existence of a non-cancelled contract?
You can probably avoid thisâor, rather, cover your ass legallyâby doing something like sending them a letter registered mail informing them that you are cancelling and will be blocking further payments.
It's far from a good solution, but it should at least put you in a better position vis-a-vis the courts if it comes to that.
Suddenly waiting on the phone for 45 minutes doesn't sound so bad, unless proving a point is your main goal.
Actually there is another option. Make a complaint to your state's Attorney General's Office. They usually have a website for filing consumer complaints, and AGO will contact the business, and the business is usually responsive when contacted by AGO.
How does this work? Do you provide the AGO with your name, phone and address? Subscription details?
Yes. Here's the Texas AGO's web site, as an example: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/consumer-protection/fil...
It certainly takes less that 45 minutes to send registered mail. There are even online services to which you can upload a PDF or document of your message. I have done this on numerous occasions.
For some people, being on the phone for 45 minutes (and what guarantee is there that you'd actually get to talk to them after 45 minutes?) during business hours is simply not an option. They would have to take time off from work, which a) might not be allowed, and b) if allowed would certainly reduce their pay.
Furthermore, there's an entire category of people for whom "talk on the phone" is not an option, period. If they wanted to cancel by the approved method, they'd not only need to take that time themselves, they'd need someone else willing to take that time with them.
Simple anecdote, but when I paid a medical bill and they still came after me and sent it to collections, I contested the bill and told the collection agency that this is not my debt. Never heard from them again.
Only in America
Why is a law needed to address this? Isn't the market supposed to adjust for companies like this?
Poe's Law truly is a terrible thing.
We have hundreds of years of examples of the blessed free market failing to do exactly that.
If the free market had it's way we'd still be under the yoke of Standard Oil and Ma Bell.
One key element of a free market is the "well informed consumer". How is the consumer supposed to be informed about what new cutting edge chemicals are toxic, for instance?
For the hundreds of years of examples, we have not had an interconnected network with information available to almost every human on the planet.
Not a free market project. Funded by the US military.
Precisely. The overarching HN view, although it's not a monolith (so the viewpoint isn't shared by all), is that the free market solves for all things and regulation by the government is largely a waste of taxpayer money that could be going to other things worthwhile (roads, military, police).
The woke ideology wants to add all of this nonsense regulation and make it hard for real entrepreneurs to generate value in the wonderful system of capitalism. /s
P.S. this is also a good summary of every all in podcast episode post election
The hidden fees is what turned me off from AirBnb...
Because it would display the nightly rate as $X.
But then at checkout, it would add in "house cleaning fees" etc (which I don't dispute is a fair fee to include) but it at times can grossly misrepresent what your true nightly cost is when searching.
Maybe this will be a step in the direction like Telco's have had to do with creating simplified & standardized "nutrition labels" for pricing.
An excellent change. It's unfortunate that stewardship of the committee will soon change hands as Khan has been a great advocate for fair contracts between companies and consumers during her tenure.
Indeed, Khan has been the first real pro-public steward of the FTC for decades.
As a free market fan, Khan seems to have been pretty terrible.
But this looks genuinely good! It's basically banning fraud.
---[EDIT], since everyone is asking for reasons here are two libertarian/conservative critiques:
⢠https://reason.com/2024/11/07/good-riddance-lina-khan/
⢠https://archive.ph/IjNmZ
As a pro-market fan, Khan is great.
Pro-market: pro-market advocates for policies that enhance competition and market efficiency. Understands that god markets are made. Pro-market advocates believe in creating conditions where businesses can compete fairly without undue advantages from government favoritism. Government regulation can be essential to correct market failures and promote a level playing field.
Free market: and ideological stance where markets are without government intervention. Belief in ideal world where market failures don't exist and if they exists that's a good thing.
>Free market: and ideological stance where markets are without government intervention
no, markets without government intervention are called "laissez-faire" markets. There would be no need for that term if that's what free market meant.
Why do you describe âfree marketâ as being ideological, and âpro-marketâ without those terms? Both seem equally ideological (or not).
Idealist: "the free market is perfect!"
Realist: "the free market has flaws, which can be addressed by..."
Replace "free market" with anything you like
The realist might be an idealist that is seeing inexistent flaws tho
They most likely aren't idealist, as that isn't a requirement. Anyone who's smarter than a potato can notice some of the more glaring failures (even if they don't understand the mechanism behind it).
Then that's not a realist, by definition.
> accepting a situation as it is and being prepared to deal with it accordingly.
or
> representing a person or thing in a way that is accurate and true to life.
That's the point, a wrong realist.
Everything is ideology to some extent, but not everything is ideological to the same degree. The beliefs that a level playing field is good and that winning by means of political favoritism is bad are almost universally agreed on. Almost all political philosophies, including various shades of socialism and communism, agree that markets are needed to some degree if only for price discovery.
Republicans have made the term ideological a negative one. Sure, the dictionary definition is to relate to ideology; but in practice (especially when talking politics) it implies one is picking a worse option because it aligns with their ideology. So their claim above is one is picking free markets due to ideology, whereas another would pick pro markets because it's actually the best solution.
Because they are against one and for the other. Pro markets means whatever policies they agree with, which is of course how all broken highly regulated markets begin their run.
I mean, I agree that Khan is the best possible option, but I disagree that pro-market isn't ideological.
Where the free market fans see child slavery and sexual slavery and rejoice (free to make any contract you want to after all), the pro market people believe that if you just put enough guard rails on it, greed will magically turn into a force for good.
Obviously I also have an ideology, but at least I'm honest enough to not pretend that capitalism (or communism/anarchy) are naturally occuring, instead of simply a choice we make.
> Khan seems to have been pretty terrible
to the contrary, she's great for free, competitive markets
she's just not good for winner-take-all M&A investors, and _that_ is a good thing
the average American - and even the average investor - will not benefit from her departure
Those are pretty weak sauce.
The Reason piece is lazy drive-by snark. Calling the anti-trust standards of the 20c "hipster anti-trust" is just a-historical. Blocking consolidation of national chains is hardly some crazy innovation. In fact, it was Bork who was the rebel introducing the stricter "consumer harm" standard. People might argue which is the appropriate standard -- the one invented during the 1890s to break the most powerful trusts in history, or the one invented by a Regan appointee in 1980 to replace it. But the Reason snark does nothing except claim it.
At least the WSJ makes an actual argument about consumer harm. Unfortunately, their argument is: there has been so much consolidation in distribution, we need to consolidate retail to increase their bargaining power to balance. Given the geographical nature of grocery shopping, consolidation is likely to reduce consumer bargaining power further. That the WSJ fails to acknowledge the obvious fact that the greater power of a merged entity would act on both sides of the market is bad-faith.
Khan has been absolutely spectacular for the free markets. Transparency in pricing (with this law), transparency in cancellation of subscriptions, blocking acquisitions where businesses should fail.
The free market shouldn't allow monopolies, or duopolies to form. Bad businesses should fail, not absorb more capital and continue scaling.
Her policy changes have been countlessly shut down/overturned by courts since she's overstepped her authority.
that should tell you she is doing the absolute right things :)
What do you mean? Minimising monopolies is how you keep the free market competitive.
I hope they reply. This is the first FTC in a while to try and get the free market "free" again, rather than captured.
Free competition should mean that you don't get punished for winning. There is no sport that punishes a competitor who is constantly winning, as long as they are competing fairly. Imagine Schwarzenegger being banned from Mr Olympia or Gretzky being banned for life from minor league ice hockey. So that the other competitors are given a fair chance of winning.
But every sport punishes competitors who are cheating or being unsportsmanlike. As it should be in the marketplace. But hackers and the EU and US bureaucrats think that being a leader in a market has to be punished for being a "monopoly". While always turning a blind eye to rampant fraud and scams that are in the marketplace everywhere online and offline.
> There is no sport that punishes a competitor who is constantly winning, as long as they are competing fairly
Almost all North American sports have a player entry draft, where the weighting is based on your success. The best teams (eg the Detroit Red Wings of the 90âs and 00âs) are given garbage draft picks, while the bottom-feeders (eg the Edmonton Oilers of the late 00âs-early 10âs) are given (the opportunity for) superstars. This is clearly a punishment for doing well, and a reward for being terrible.
Most sports have a salary cap to prevent being able to buy your way to success. They recognize that having more money than your opponent gives you an unfair advantage and destroys competition.
It's funny you bring up Schwarzenegger, as his last Olympia win was mired in controversy for being almost certainly rigged.
Did he cheat? No, everyone used a similar amount of steroids. But to anyone with eyes and a basic knowledge of the sport it's overwhelmingly obvious that the organizers and judges threw it in his favor because of the attention it would bring.
Which is the issue when an entity becomes too big to fail. There is a power disparity that is virtually impossible to overcome as the leverage is so much that any opponent can be swat down with ease.
Things such as:
- leveraging economies of scale when dealing with suppliers and resources to the point of starving access to competition
- using lobbyists to write legislation in their favor or blockade opponents
- doing fuck all with no reservations, then pay out lawsuits and fines at an order of magnitude less than profit made and damage done
Thatâs because business isnât an abstract activity that doesnât affect anyoneâs real life.
Okay, what about art? Should we punish and limit the most successful artists to give other people a chance?
No, because see above.
Art affects people's real life profoundly. For example TV shows alter the behaviour of entire generations of people.
> But hackers and the EU and US bureaucrats think that being a leader in a market has to be punished for being a "monopoly".
This is a provocative claim. Do you have any examples?
It is repeated on the level of gospel here on HN that Apple is "a monopoly", and nobody even flinches at the absurdity of that claim.
Thatâs not in this thread, though, and it usually gets a lot of pushback.
I'm not an expert on these things, so I'm asking in good faith; what significant anti monopoly policies have been enacted in the US in recent history?
> There is no sport that punishes a competitor who is constantly winning, as long as they are competing fairly.
Constantly winning in a competitive environment with no runaway feedback loops[0] is evidence of cheating.
See also, casinos: the "legitimate" ones don't rig the game - they know the odds; they expect you to win something here and then, but if they see you winning consistently, they'll rightfully assume you're cheating somehow, and ban you from the venue.
> But every sport punishes competitors who are cheating or being unsportsmanlike. As it should be in the marketplace.
Marketplace isn't like sportsball. It's like war. On the market like in war, anything goes. The only people who can afford living under delusion of market sportsmanship are people who are already so well-off and safe they can treat it as a game; for everyone else, it's a matter of life and death.
> But hackers and the EU and US bureaucrats think that being a leader in a market has to be punished for being a "monopoly".
The market isn't some divine ball game, or a magic ritual. It's a feedback system, with known failure modes. Wrt. monopolies, in particular, any good profit-seeking actor will aim at becoming a monopolist in their market segment, because that's how they can maximize profits while minimizing effort. At the same time, the market serves a critical function in organizing human society - but that stops working when monopolies pop up.
It's really very simple: all the goods and services and advancement we enjoy require market players to be actively putting in effort. To society, an entrepreneur is basically a donkey with a pole mounted to it, from which there hangs a carrot, just out of reach - the donkey just wants to grab the carrot, but the society only benefits when the donkey is chasing it. The donkey needs to believe they can win, so it keeps running, but it also can never be allowed to actually get their prize, because then it'll stop. That's why markets are regulated as to let people and companies grow and accumulate winnings, until a point, past which they'd stop participating (or worse, just go screwing around breaking things).
I.e. it's not about punishing someone for winning - it's about preventing them from complete victory, because then they become useless to society.
> While always turning a blind eye to rampant fraud and scams that are in the marketplace everywhere online and offline.
Who's turning a blind eye to it? Fraud and scams are the base state of the market; it's what it decays to if left to its own devices. Regulations are there to counteract this tendency.
--
[0] - Feedback loops like compounding interest. In sports, unlike in the economy, you can't just reinvest your win to get more wins, and then reinvest them in turn, until you're winning so much so fast that no one can ever hope to catch up with you.
> Constantly winning in a competitive environment with no runaway feedback loops[0] is evidence of cheating.
Right. How did Usain Bolt cheat? How did Michael Phelps cheat? How did ABBA cheat?
> any good profit-seeking actor will aim at becoming a monopolist in their market segment
Of course. And then hackers redefine the market segment to encompass that businesses product and ta-da, you have a monopoly. Like Apple.
If we're talking about real monopolies, then I couldn't agree more. But what hackers and the EU are doing is redefining monopoly in a dishonest way because they have personal grudges against a company.
> The donkey needs to believe they can win, so it keeps running, but it also can never be allowed to actually get their prize, because then it'll stop.
Here's something to blow your mind: The donkey enjoys running. Or let's take a real life example: sled dogs. They love pulling the sled. Entrepreneurs love working and love competing. Those who don't love it usually pull out of the game with their profits way before they have even national impact.
This is a huge divide in attitude I've seen everywhere in the world in my life. You have category X of people who see all kind of work as an immense suffering. They complain endlessly, do the minimum effort, and never get anywhere. And you have category Y of people who love working, because it's doing something productive and learning. That doesn't mean that they're satisfied with being abused wage slaves. Rather it is the first category who never advances in life, because they think it's all a scam. People in the second category also fail a lot because they take chances. But they usually get up again.
> Who's turning a blind eye to it? Fraud and scams are the base state of the market; it's what it decays to if left to its own devices. Regulations are there to counteract this tendency.
All governments and law enforcement seem to be turning a blind eye to it. About 50% of advertisements on Facebook and Instagram are outright scams, ie physical products from brand names that are advertised at bargain prices and if you "buy" it you will not get delivery because it is an outright scam. US and EU governments should fine Meta billions of dollars for having their main source of income from organized crime and fraud. But they are focused on completely irrelevant crap like app stores. Talk about sieving mosquitoes and swallowing camels.
Ah, Reason.
The paragon of good and sensible arguments like, "Legalize Insider Trading".
This author has not written one of those pieces, but she is in good company with the ones who did.
Personally, I think she's for the free market. She is progressive, which is controversial, but I don't really see why non-billionaires run to the defense of big tech when their monopolistic status is scrutinized.
I totally understand why billionaires do, on the other hand. Worth watching Reid Hoffman embarrass himself on Jake Tapper on the subject of Khan recently for those interested
Because people have been conditioned through the media to believe that once the Billionares get taxed, you're next.
We're at an unprecedented levels of wealth inequality in America. Billion dollar businesses built on tax payer money, should contribute to the system. Instead we've designed a system where these companies would rather pay millions of dollars in campaign contributions and to lobbyists.
HN is full of people who think they will one day be the billionaires scamming people.
I well mm used to like reason a while ago but this is laughable. The article does not show how or explain why or in which manner she affects consumers.
It says that she has been bad for them but there is no proof of this.
Instead it makes quite a comical attempt at trying to vaguely point at the sky and say she is evil or overreaching, but she is not and anyone whoa actually wants a free market can tell you that. I honestly just cannot understand what happened to Reason I checked some more or their side articles and wow the quality has dropped to a level that would make the NYT blush.
The article is pretty clear to me.
The main complaint is that the Khan FTC by default is against all mergers and acquisitions.
This is different from the previous standard that only mergers that harm consumers are bad. So now even mergers that benefit consumers are blocked.
That is an a-historical claim. That standard was THE standard from 1890-1980. The consumer-harm standard was the innovation of Bork under Regan in 1980.
Free markets - you know freedom isn't free right? You have to enforce it - and you do this by regulation.
Please name some of the terrible parts
EDIT: to make it easier here's a list of actions from perplexity:
Here are more explicit actions taken by the FTC under Lina Khan's leadership:
Lawsuit against Amazon (2023): The FTC filed a landmark antitrust case accusing Amazon of monopolistic practices in its online marketplace and Prime subscription service.
Meta (Facebook) lawsuit (2023): The FTC sued Meta to block its acquisition of virtual reality app maker Within Unlimited, citing concerns about monopolization in the VR market.
Microsoft-Activision merger challenge (2023): The FTC attempted to block Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, though it ultimately failed.
Kroger-Albertsons merger: A U.S. district court judge ruled in favor of the FTC to block the proposed $25 billion merger between these two major supermarket chains
Nvidia's acquisition of Arm: The FTC sued to block this merger, though it's not explicitly mentioned in the search results
Amazon's acquisition of iRobot: While not explicitly mentioned in the search results, this is another high-profile merger that the FTC has challenged under Khan's leadership.
Enforcement against data brokers (2022-2023): The FTC took action against several data brokers for selling precise geolocation data that could be used to track people's movements.
Zoom settlement (2021): The FTC finalized a settlement with Zoom over allegations of deceptive security practices.
Right to Repair initiative (2021): Khan's FTC unanimously voted to ramp up law enforcement against repair restrictions that prevent small businesses, workers, and consumers from fixing their own products.
Made in USA labeling rule (2021): The FTC finalized a new rule cracking down on marketers who make false, unqualified claims that their products are Made in the USA.
Penalties for fake reviews (2022): The FTC imposed multi-million dollar penalties on companies for using fake reviews and suppressing negative reviews.
Action against "dark patterns" (2021-2023): The FTC has taken action against companies using deceptive design practices known as "dark patterns" to trick consumers.
Increased use of Penalty Offense Authority: The FTC has revived its Penalty Offense Authority to seek civil penalties for violations of FTC administrative orders.
Ban on hidden junk fees: The FTC announced a rule requiring companies to show full prices for items like hotel rooms, concert tickets, and sporting events upfront, rather than hiding fees until the end of the checkout process
Changes to merger review process: The FTC has altered principles, practices, and policies of merger review that had been in place for decades
Expanded scope of enforcement: The FTC has taken a more holistic approach to identifying harms affecting workers, independent businesses, and consumers, with a focus on addressing power asymmetries and unlawful practices
Rulemaking changes: Chair Khan has orchestrated wholesale changes in FTC rulemaking practices and policies
Proposed ban on noncompete clauses: The FTC has proposed banning noncompete clauses in employer agreements
Increased focus on data privacy: The FTC has sued multiple companies for allegedly sharing customer data and warned about the "hidden impacts" of advertising tools like third-party tracking pixels
That's a pretty good list of things the FTC deserves credit for, in my book.
Literally the best government person we have had for competitive markets in decades
They should ban hidden taxes too. The sticker price should be the final price.
I remember shopping in Japan.
The price on the tag, is exactly what you pay (same with services, like hotels).
Since this is Japan, it's a high price, but no surprises.
Also, the service is amazing, and they won't accept tips. If you leave money on the table, they will chase after you, to give it back.
> Also, the service is amazing, and they won't accept tips. If you leave money on the table, they will chase after you, to give it back.
I visited Japan some years back and loved this aspect of the culture as well. An Australian ski guide (this was a winter visit) explained it like so: "the Japanese attitude is to want to do a good job by default. Tipping implies that a good job is only done because of pay. The Japanese see quality service as intrinsically valuable in itself."
I believe that servers are also paid quite well.
Quick Google search says the average is $7.55 USD/hour (1,159 Yen). Seems like they're paid quite poorly.
Might be more to that story. Remember that Japan is a very socialized country, so CoL expenses are not what they are in the US.
I have a friend that basically shops as part of her job. She has been power-shopping, mostly in Europe (dream job, I suppose), for decades.
She tells me that she runs into the same sales associates, year after year, and has watched them âgrow upâ over years.
So it seems to be possible, at least in Europe, for people to make lifelong careers in the service industry.
That's fantasy. The same thing is true in China. All it means is that the local culture doesn't tip.
Japan does have a well known âcustomer is godâ cultural background; whether or not tipping has anything to do with that is here or there, though it is the expectation that if someone does a job, it is expected not to be half assed.
One of the big differences between here in Japan and other parts of the world Iâve visited and lived in, is the near absence of service staff who actively make a point of looking like they hate their life and treat you like crap, though this is slowly changing here too.
This kind of reply is what makes me want to quit HN forever. There's always somebody out there smarter who knows better. Why bother to try and contribute anything?
Yes, contributing mythology is in fact worse than contributing nothing.
This is geek internet. Suggesting that anything about Japan is less than peak perfection is controversial.
Same in UK.
As a kid, having grown up in the UK I knew that if the price label said ÂŁ1.99 and I had ÂŁ2 in my pocket I could afford it, with ÂŁ0.01 change. First time I went to the USA as a young teenager I remember being quite embarrassed when the thing I thought I was getting for $1.99 was actually not $1.99 but $2.17 or whatever, and I had to leave without buying. Felt quite deceptive and totally incomprehensible.
I'm not sure Japan is the best example here. My experience is that most shops have the price excluding consumption tax printed very prominently in large numbers, and then price including consumption tax is printed in much smaller writing underneath.
The price excluding tax is the only one you can read at a distance, that draws you in. As someone from the UK who is used to seeing price tags show the final price you pay at the till, I was constantly disappointed that items weren't quite such a bargain as I'd first hoped.
On the whole there are still many things that are much cheaper than in the UK though :)
I have a feeling that's optional. It may even be regional. My experience was almost exclusively Tokyo.
I traveled to Tokyo for over 20 years, and always paid what was on the sticker.
I was told that the tax was included in the price.
I remember one of my bigger purchases, was a ÂĽ75,000 Oceanus watch, and that was exactly what I paid.
If you go to a donqi the price tags list without the tax besides small text that either lists the full price or says "+10% consumption tax" or along those lines.
As a tourist you don't always have to pay the consumption tax though.
I have a feeling that you're right.
I remember the saleswoman asking to see my passport, when I was buying the watch (it was that big department store in Akihabara).
There was a period of a few years where they raised the sales tax in steps 5%, 8%, 10%, and stores were allowed to show the price without tax during that period, which has left some practices a bit messy since.
I have done a fair bit of travelling. The US is the only place I've been where the price shown is not the price paid. Adding on tips, and it becomes nigh on impossible to know how much something will cost you upfront. It's ridiculous tbh
Japan has the exact same sales tax rate(s) across the entire country, and it rarely changes. In the US, we have thousands of different rates and they change multiple times per year.
Also, while it is the norm in Japan to include the tax, there are some exceptions.
(Japan has 2 rates, 8% for certain items like food, and 10% for everything else).
Brick and mortar stores know exactly how much tax they have to pay, yet they don't show an all-inclusive price. It's clearly not a case of online retailers just not showing the tax because it's difficult. If they wanted to they could let you give your post code before checking out, and query the same database to show the post-tax price for everything.
Really, you expect them to go through every item in the store, multiple times per year, and update the price tags?
Aside from silly "sales-tax-holidays" I've never heard of the sales tax rates changing so frequently. I'm curious to know where this is happening "multiple times per year". Here in MA it's been the same rate for 15 years. And for the sales-tax-holiday situation can't a shop just say something like "everything will have x% taken off at the register" just like they would during a typical "10% off all items" type of sale?
If MA has a single rate across the entire state that hasn't changed in 15 users, they are very different from how most other states operate.
Here in Texas you will nearly always be paying the maximum 8.25%, its been that way for 30+ years.
Around me most stores change their price tags weekly, if not more often. They either have a sheet with new tags or a small printer and scanner and they swap out the tags on the shelf.
With price increases over the last couple of years from inflation, retailers have shown they are more than capable of doing so already. So yes
Price increases don't hit every item all at once.
> In the US, we have thousands of different rates and they change multiple times per year.
Yet at any given moment, every proprietor is miraculously able calculate the taxes due at the point of sale. The variety of tax regimes, and the fact that the amounts change doesn't impact the ability to calculate the final amount due.
This is the norm in Europe.
It's crazy to me that in the US I can never be sure how much I'll end up paying...
I believe this is the default for most of the world. Some countries have some strange differences like Argentina having a table charge on your bill, but here in Australia, the price on the box is the price at the till, with the exception of the card surcharges which are currently being reviewed to be removed.
The exception here is also the holiday surcharge (an extra fee on holidays and Sundays), which has to be "disclosed" before ordering. Usually there is a small sign somewhere that nobody pays attention to.
The price part is essentially the same all over the world except for America, where youâre not entirely sure how much more youâll have to add for taxes and tips.
Except 100 yen stores which are actually 110 yen stores.
> The price on the tag, is exactly what you pay (same with services, like hotels).
That's the norm, not the exception, in developed countries.
No -- it's the norm in countries that have a single uniform VAT.
It's obviously not the norm in countries that have sales taxes which vary by locality.
Whether a country is "developed" or not has nothing to do with it. The vast majority of countries in Africa have a VAT, while the world's richest country has a sales tax.
> It's obviously not the norm in countries that have sales taxes which vary by locality
Why not? If each store or restaurant or theatre or whatever in each locality know what price to bill you, they know the applicable price to show you upfront.
> Whether a country is "developed" or not has nothing to do with it. The vast majority of countries in Africa have a VAT, while the world's richest country has a sales tax.
The relevance of developed or not is how much of the economy is informal or includes a part of negotiation.
> Why not? If each store in each locality know what price to bill you, they know the applicable price to show you upfront.
Because it makes state-level or national-level advertising of prices impossible. Or even local-level in many cases.
> The relevance of developed or not is how much of the economy is informal or includes a part of negotiation.
No it doesn't, where are you getting that? Feel free to browse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country
and Ctrl+F for "informal" or "negotiation". There are a lot of indicators of developing vs developed countries, but your idea is most assuredly not one of them. Also, sales tax vs VAT has nothing to do with an informal economy or price negotiation either.
> Because it makes state-level or national-level advertising of prices impossible. Or even local-level in many cases.
In large countries like Canada, and I would imagine the US, you probably don't want to advertise prices nationally. The cost of goods to will be different for a business in Vancouver and Southern Ontario compared to the Atlantic Provinces. Never mind small towns in remote communities connected to the road network, such as Northern Ontario. Especially never mind small towns in remote communities that are not connected to the road network.
> Because it makes state-level or national-level advertising of prices impossible. Or even local-level in many cases
Hardly impossible, just slightly less easy ("available for $X* (pre-tax)" / "starting at $X").
And are seriously claiming that ease for advertisers takes precedence over ease of use and pricing transparency for consumers?
> and Ctrl+F for "informal" or "negotiation". There are a lot of indicators of developing vs developed countries, but your idea is most assuredly not one of them. Also, sales tax vs VAT has nothing to do with an informal economy or price negotiation either.
Thank you. What I meant was that the only reason it might not be the standard in some developing countries is that they might have more informal economies with more negotiations involved. Literally the only legitimate excuse. But when that's not the case, from Morocco to Sri Lanka to Uzbekistan, price is shown upfront, everything included.
Except for the one with the largest economy.
No sales tax in Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon.
And Canada!
And that's not a point of pride now, is it. If you're the best but others are clearly beating you in a few categories, that's more reasons to improve to try to be the best everywhere, not put your hands in your ears and pretend nothing is wrong.
Congratulations on living in a country where there are many people who are vastly richer than you.
If you're talking about sales taxes, they can't until you input your shipping address. Because they depend on where you live.
Nobody's trying to fool you by not including sales taxes. There's just no way to show them in advance, unless you want to start typing your address and zip code into every shopping website before you even browse.
In the EU, the site guesses the location based on the IP, writes "Delivery to Denmark [Change?]" and shows prices with Danish VAT.
If I'm signed in to the shop from making a previous purchase, they will use the location of the previous purchase.
If Denmark has just one sales tax rate or VAT, then maybe that can work OK for Denmark.
But this isn't about Denmark -- it is about the US.
In the US, there are over 13,000 different sales tax jurisdictions, and each one of them may have a different tax rate.
I wish the best to anyone who would ever be tasked with sorting that out with any semblance of accuracy using IP geolocation databases.
Maybe not have 13000 different sales tax jurisdictions?
Just a thought...
It doesn't really work like that, though. Sales tax is up to the states to sort out how to deal with on their own, and there's 50 of them.
Nationally (or as some may prefer, "federallly"), the sales tax rate is already zero -- and has always been zero.
> Sales tax is up to the states to sort out how to deal with on their own, and there's 50 of them.
To add on for any else trying to figure out the 13k number from this statement.
Counties can also apply their own additional taxes.
Cities can also apply their own additional taxes.
On top of just that, the cities and counties can set different taxes in the same area, such as a sugar tax or an alcohol tax or even a pre-prepared food tax vs groceries. It gets complicated fast.
it can get really easy: just don't let this madness sprawl out of control? :)
per state, I understand the tax. set it per state, and be done with it. maybe split it in some % with the city (I don't know if cities directly get a portion of it already or not?), so it's a win-win.
Take a good guess and let the user type in their zip code?
Zip codes are for postal routing, not tax rates.
Items I order at home are subject to a 7.25% sales tax rate.
My neighbor across the street (our front doors are maybe 80 feet apart) pays 6.75%.
We both live in the same zip code. We both live within the same city. We both live in the same school district. We each live in two different counties.
(And up the road a bit, a third county is involved instead.)
This seems less like a defense of pre-tax prices and more like an indictment of a thoroughly ridiculous tax system.
Not at all. I'm really not trying to defend anything here.
It is my considered opinion that it is all quite resoundingly fucked.
Enter your county then? Dunno enter something to differentiate.
That seems simple, too.
But some cities have their own sales taxes in addition to (or instead of) county sales taxes, so county alone isn't good enough.
Besides, there's literally 30 different counties in the US named "Hancock".
(If this were an easy problem to solve it'd have been solved a long time ago.)
---
I think we're already back to where we started, wherein: In order to display an accurate sales tax, we need to know the address, city, and state of the buyer.
A lot of sites, for example Amazon, don't update VAT until checkout, even if you set "Ship to [country]" when searching. Then the price suddenly jumps.
Yes bc in the EU there is national VAT. In the US there is state and local sales tax. You can and will pay different sales tax between cities in a given state.
You can do this, albeit slightly less reliably, in the US as well. The geolocation isn't perfect, but you could easily put "With delivery to XXXXX [edit]" where XXXXX is a zip code you geolocate off an ip (or lookup in a user profile for a recurring user).
The zip code is not fine grained enough to identify tax jurisdictions in many places in the US.
Yes, because my IP address doesn't give them a way to calculate tentative taxes? My IP can be used to serve me ads, but not serve me actually relevant information?
There's a very small % of traffic that actually uses VPNs
Correct, it doesn't. IP geolocation is nowhere near precise enough.
Remember, sales tax isn't something big like state-level. It's literally town-level, including tiny towns. Two sides of the same street can have a different sales tax.
Not to mention all the extra rules, such as individual clothing items under $110 being exempt in New York.
It somehow works almost anywhere outside of NA? It's really not a crazy concept - estimate it based on geolocation and say "more exact will be available once you enter your address". The problem is, that genuinely negatively affect the sales because people see the true price of things.
> estimate it based on geolocation and say "more exact will be available once you enter your address".
I appreciate this can be done and countries in Europe do it, I just don't see how this is any better at all than status quo:
* Current State: we all know the quoted price doesn't include sales tax, which will be added to make the final price in checkout after we enter our address.
* Final State: we all know the quoted price will likely change during checkout, when we see the final price after we enter our address.
So we make things more complicated for vendors, and we make it not just acceptable but required that vendors use our IP addresses for geolocation, only to give us a maybe-right-maybe-wrong final price. Does anyone feel scammed by not having tax included on the price in the listings of Macy's online store?
The only reason why status quo is there because people are less likely to remove items from their online shopping carts once they've added it. There are techniques and shopping check out flows that have been perfected over the years to drive up the online sales. Realistically, it won't move the needle for the people who are on this forum because of the average salary (a few dollars are usually not a big deal for us), but it can be a make it or break it choice for a good chunk of customers.
I'm not sure why one wouldn't want to know the real price before the checkout. It's a bit baffling to me. It could be a cultural thing as well, then I guess, there isn't really a right or wrong way of looking at it.
> I'm not sure why one wouldn't want to know the real price before the checkout. It's a bit baffling to me.
It's just that, in the list of things I'd like fixed about the world, that's about dead last.
When you're used to sales tax being added at the register, it's not an inconvenience. Who cares.
Fair, I guess it's a cultural thing then. I absolutely have no idea what other municipality's taxes are the second I get out of mine. I wouldn't want to randomly predict whether it's 10, 12, or 15%.
> The only reason why status quo is there because people are less likely to remove items from their online shopping carts once they've added it.
Sure, in a world where the actual sticker price is displayed. Do you believe this will remain true when customers have to add items to the cart to get the ârealâ price?
That's literally how it works everywhere else...? For example, when I go to amazon.jp, even without logging in, it will show you tax included prices once you enter your postal code.
Ok I see what you mean now. On an ecommerce site this works but I don't see how it can be done in advertising.
Apparently they can track you to the nearest 5m 24 hours a day, figure out that your teenage daughter is pregnant and replicate your likeness and voice perfectly - but when it comes to sales tax its an intractable problem.
I believe you are referencing the famous Target case. As I understand the dad was angry that Target was sending baby-related coupons to his teenage daughter.
Finding out your teenage daughter is pregnant based on her shopping is easy. Itâs actually harder not to notice. âCustomers like you also boughtâ is an effective algorithm because people are mostly the same. Pregnancy has some very specific and unique needs which create a strong signal.
Nobody is in a shady back room poring over chat logs and GPS coordinates looking for pregnant teenagers. It just falls out of the sysem.
That's a non-sequitur unless the question being considered is specifically whether a data hoarder like Google should build in estimated sales tax in their store vs "a random shopping cart from a retailer I've never interacted with before".
I've been working at FAANG for the past 10 years, so this made me absolutely chuckle!
I can totally image a PM somewhere calculate the negative bps for this and call the experiment a failure!
Yeah, I totally get you! I've done exactly this work for semi-B2B company where it clearly showed the sticker price effect and we ended up removing the taxes from it. Unless it's legislated, it's obvious the way the companies will go.
> It somehow works almost anywhere outside of NA?
Is North America unique in allowing local municipalities to set their own taxes?
> It's really not a crazy concept - estimate it based on geolocation and say "more exact will be available once you enter your address".
Thatâs exactly what happens now, except the advertised price is actually correct instead of an âestimateâ. I have an intuitive sense for local tax. How can I know what method was used to compute this estimated price?
Out of my head, if I recall correctly, Australia, Japan, Denmark do local municipal taxes as well (some are more flat than others).
Anyways, all I was saying that it's a solved UX problem, and the reason why you're not getting full price is because A/B testing has shown that when customers see the complete price, they get a shock and less likely to buy the item. This doesn't have much to do with websites caring about some edge cases that they'll somehow won't be able to give out exact price to you. In the worst case, the shopping websites could ask you to enter your postal code and show all prices with the tax included price.
So are estimated prices being advertised in Australia, Japan, or Denmark? Why is North America uniquely susceptible to A/B testing?
Municipal taxes are not an edgecase in the United States at least. Theyâre very much the norm, especially in telecommunications.
Because according to Japanese law, in most of the scenarios, the full price, to your best ability, has to be presented to the potential customer. Same goes for Australia, if I recall correctly. No clue about Denmark, I'm sorry. But assuming it's similar over there as well.
It's not that NA is the only one susceptible to A/B testing. It's more of a - it's-grey-area-to-illegal to not show full prices outside of NA.
Yes. Source: https://www.nta.go.jp/taxes/shiraberu/taxanswer/shohi/6902.h...
I agree, there are a lot of cases where they don't show the full prices. Especially in the recent years when they've been changing the consumption tax rapidly, and allowing shops to have some leeway. But online prices, almost everywhere, include tax. Even Shopify forces JP merchants to display them while selling in the area.
Huh, I find that very surprising. Are the estimates gamed at all? Is there any rule around how accurate they have to be?
You just put your postal code and it shows all prices according to your municipality, it will be as exact as you can get. Just go to amazon.jp, it should have a text input somewhere for your postal code to calculate the tax.
In terms of gaming, hmm⌠I guess, you could add wrong municipalityâs taxes when you show the original price, and switch over at the checkout. But my assumption is that would be deemed illegal, as you are knowingly misleading the customer. Some in person stores still try a bit to mislead you by putting the full price in smaller font (like including the consumption tax), and exclude it over it in the bigger font. But I can still accept that, as I am informed about the full price somehow.
Ok well obviously if you have the address the correct calculation can be made. Thatâs consistent with the behavior in the US.
What is displayed for price before you put in postal code? What price do generic banner or TV ads display?
My guess is approximate (average?) tax. I'm currently outside of Japan, by default Amazon shows me the price in Yen and says it can't deliver to me. When I put down the postal code in Tokyo, shows the same amount. Probably takes the biggest city's tax rate when it can't determine it through geolocation.
What about billboards or banner ads? When an ISP in Japan wants to advertise their service do they include a price on the billboard?
What you describe sounds like the same thing that happens in the US. So what's special about Australia, Japan, and Denmark as you stated earlier?
Why wouldnât 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 other countries, almost all display prices have to include local taxes. Itâs a solved problem, but thereâs no political appetite for it in US/Canada because it will hurt the sales.
Not sure how telco taxes work in Japan but it would be impossible to advertise an accurate tax-included price in my city because not all the residents of the metro area have the same tax structure. Zip code isn't enough. The full address is required. So TV and print advertisements are pre-tax. I don't see how it could work any other way.
Yep, where I currently live based on IP geolocation I would be quoted incorrect state sales tax 100% of the time. Though it's sort of the perfect geography to be problematic (Vancouver, WA side of the greater Portland, OR metro area spanning a sales tax/no sales tax state boundary).
I will take the blurb which says taxes are an approximate calculation based on web browsing data available, vs, no taxes shown. We're gate keeping good features for large % of users over some edge cases.
So currently they correctly advertise the pre-tax price but since thatâs not the correct total price your proposal is to display an approximate price which is also not the correct total price. I donât see how this reduces ambiguity.
A higher price is more accurate than the pretax price
> A higher price is more accurate than the pretax price
Well, no, it isnât. Consider the Oregon/Washington border. An IP could bounce around there. Oregon has zero sales tax so the pre-tax price is literally correct for Oregon residents. Adding estimated tax will be less accurate.
Similarly I could live in unincorporated King County such as White Center and not be subject to Seattle tax while still being subject to King County and Washington tax even though the other side of the street is Seattle.
Thereâs a sugary drink tax in Seattle. The border is Roxbury. Thereâs a 7/11 on Roxbury in White Center. Should a 7/11 sandwich board on the Seattle side of the street across from that 7/11 advertise the price with or without that tax?
Gate keeping what?
You know where you live, you know what your local sales tax is. The current system works fine.
Or, just get rid of sales tax anyway. It is the 2nd or 3rd time the same money has been taxed, depending on how you view it, and it's pretty ridiculous that a person with $100 in their bank account (post-taxes) still does not have the equivalent of $100 of purchasing power.
Itâs the transaction that is taxed, not the money.
By your logic I shouldnât have to pay income tax on sales because my customers already paid income tax. We could simply the whole thing by just making dollar bills worth $0.66.
> By your logic I shouldnât have to pay income tax on sales because my customers already paid income tax.
People often believe that because something has been for a while, it must always be so. Not too long ago we didn't have sales tax (introduced in the 1950's), and things were fine.
You are taxed on your income, and you are taxed on your expenses. If you invest that money or do anything productive with it, it gets taxed again. That's such a ridiculous idea - pick one and stick with it. Make it whatever percentage it needs to be, and that's it.
When someone looks at their bank account - that ought to be the final word on how much purchasing power that individual has. It shouldn't be handwavy minus 7-12%.
Mind you, that's 7-12% in addition to the 20-30% you already paid.
Only the income on the investment is taxed though. The capital isnât double taxed.
Iâd love to abolish regressive sales taxes and return to 1950s level progressive income tax rates. You have my vote.
Progressive income tax is also silly. Just because you earn more money than someone else doesn't mean you derive more benefits from the government.
The idea of "Paying what you can afford" is BS everywhere it's been implemented - from school tuition to soccer camp to taxes. Everyone feels burned and like the "others" aren't paying what they should be.
Federal taxes should be a flat percentage, no deductions, no credits, no so-called "loop holes"... nothing. Every citizen pays the same percentage (whatever it needs to be).
The incumbent tax apparatus would never allow us to have something so simple, though.
For a nation that got it's start in no small part due to being over-taxed, it's very interesting to see just how much tax shenanigans we tolerate today.
> Progressive income tax is also silly. Just because you earn more money than someone else doesn't mean you derive more benefits from the government
Ok...
> Federal taxes should be a flat percentage, no deductions, no credits, no so-called "loop holes"... nothing. Every citizen pays the same percentage (whatever it needs to be).
Flat percentage? A flat percentage means that if you earn N times what someone else earns you pay N times as much tax as they do.
But you just said a couple of paragraphs earlier that just because you earn more money that someone else doesn't mean you derive more benefits from the government. If that's going to be the basis of your tax policy shouldn't the tax be a flat amount?
Our philosophies differ.
> Progressive income tax is also silly. Just because you earn more money than someone else doesn't mean you derive more benefits from the government.
I think "pay what you can afford" is fair because the only way to make half a million dollars (or more) a year is to disproportionately reap the benefits of society. Marginal income tax is fair in the sense that everyone does pay the same. Your $11,001st dollar is taxed the same as everyone else, just like your $578,126th dollar. If you don't want to pay the highest rates then take advantage of deductions (aka incentives aka loopholes) and invest in creating jobs.
> Everyone feels burned and like the "others" aren't paying what they should be.
I definitely don't feel this way and I am happy to pay my marginal rates. I just don't think they go far enough.
> Federal taxes should be a flat percentage, no deductions, no credits, no so-called "loop holes"... nothing. Every citizen pays the same percentage (whatever it needs to be).
Do you propose a flat income tax or a flat wealth tax? Should capital gains be taxed as income?
> For a nation that got it's start in no small part due to being over-taxed, it's very interesting to see just how much tax shenanigans we tolerate today.
My understanding was that the issue was lack of representation or ability to levy local taxes but I admit my knowledge of that point in history is weak. The America of today is certainly different from revolutionary times. I would say it is better.
Yup, I know what sales tax is in my state and can do the math in my head pretty easily to get the approx. amount. If you live in a state for any length of time you should be able to do this too. even if its something odd like 7.25% you can figure out what 10% is really quickly and know it'll be a little less than that.
I'm not sure who these presumably tech-adjacent folks are who can't look at a posted price, know something about the tax/tipping/etc. conventions are, and know about what the final bill will be.
That said, I DO agree that hidden facility/resort/etc. fees and the like should go. For years, there was a conference center restoration fee tacked onto hotels all over NYC even the project wasn't even approved. Rental cars at airports are also a nightmare. There is no reason for them.
GP mentioned "sticker price", so I suspect they possibly meant physical goods or services. If you're in a retail store, there are no real obstacles (except for business unwillingness to be honest to the customer) to calculate and disclose the final price. A store knows where it's located, and that's where the sale happens.
Right, but even when they do have your zipcode (because you added beforehand for checking stock for example) they don't update the prices. It would be nice to have the option
Every local store I walk into is trying to fool me by not including sales taxes, why would online stores be any different?
Why do US states allow counties and cities to raise so many taxes?
Usually (across the world and across history) the power of taxation is very jealously guarded, and local government is usually only allowed to gather a limited range of taxes. Historically sovereigns have treated attempts by subordinates to raise their own taxes as tantamount to treason.
...why shouldn't they?
You haven't given any reason why not.
And sales tax is one of a limited range of taxes.
The new rule does have clarification that they at least have to show you the final price with taxes+shipping before they're allowed to take your credit card. Those ones I get, because they can't be calculated without knowing your billing zip code.
They should just ban sales tax. Many states already have 0% sales tax, like New Hampshire, and Delaware.
Hidden and not yet calculated are different things. They should just make a broad and sweeping stances on these hidden fees. The fact they play whack-a-mole from implementing this from industry to industry as the 'need' arises seems silly. If a price is advertised or quoted, it should be inclusive all the things with tax being the one exception.
Do you want to put in your shipping address to every website before you can shop?
Very easy, we can get inspiration from the web shops 10 years ago (and still a majority of honest sites today) : the price of the item and somewhere close the base shipping price and a (legal minimum size) link "shipping price" redirecting to a shipping price table. We can even impose the table framework like the nutritional information on food to avoid volontary complexification of that page.
A zipcode should be plenty and grocery websites do that already.
Even within a state a single 5-digit ZIP can have multiple tax rates if it spans multiple cities; true where I live.
Unfortunately, there are 13 zip codes that span across multiple states.
There are 41,000+ zip codes.
And 13 of them do not uniquely identify which state you're in.
ZIP codes are not specific enough.
In some areas, sales tax is actual multiple taxes from different overlapping jurisdictions: state, county, city, and sometimes special tax district. ZIP codes don't align with any of these, so you need to know exactly where the buyer is in order to properly calculate sales tax.
There are places where adjacent addresses in the same ZIP code have different sales tax rates.
A zipcode should be plenty and grocery websites do that already.
There's probably a Things Developers Believe About ZIP Codes list out there somewhere.
The zip code I live in spans two different cities (as well as different counties in my state). It's stupid but also it's reality
Yea, that'd be pretty swell. The only reason websites moved away from that was to "lower friction" - it's better for the consumers who end up buying the product if they know availability and pricing up front.
The only reason websites moved away from that was to "lower friction"
It was never the norm that websites never asked for your shipping address or zipcode before allowing shopping. That's really silly.
My statement was overly general and that's a fair criticism - however I do remember e-commerce in the early days of the web. That early web experience for me was that generally users were required to make an account (mostly to verify age and ability to pay) before they could interact with items or create a shopping cart. In that era the interaction of sales taxes and the internet were much more complicated and shipping times and costs much more variable. I know that when my father was buying train books he'd often need to go to conventions in other states to pick up items in person because sellers were afraid of getting scammed out of their shipping fees.
When shopping physically that shouldn't be necessary. Should it?
But I guess that would outside FTC jurisdiction?
Most online shops have a good estimate of your location based on IP. And already use it to estimate shopping costs, right?
I suspect the answer is instead to establish two tax rate calculations:
One for in-person shopping (like VAT) -- you pay the tax according to local rates, but it's factored in already.
one for online shopping, ("E-VAT") -- you pay a national rate tax and the seller is responsible for paying gross sales based on that percentage to the state and the rest goes to the IRS.
Problem comes with the Sin Taxes that have been established. For instance, in Seattle, sugared drinks MAY incur a tax depending on what kind of store you bought it from (e.g. the normal costco has to tax it but the business costco doesn't), but that doesn't affect some folks and then there's tax-exempt organizations like churches that can have their sales tax waived and then there's states where sales taxes are a majority of the income is from sales tax but only if you're local and
oh god it gets bad.
Amazon in particular probably did a lot to normalize free (in country) shipping in many cases. But it's silly that there should be a sticker price that is the final price under all circumstances.
Mind you, I'm all for more up-front transparency in general, especially to the degree that comparison-shopping is inconsistent to the degree it displays or doesn't display often significant add-ons.
At which point they'll just segment the market based on zip code and once the ecommerce platforms and big sites start doing it it'll become the norm
Good for me, my zipcode is the Walmart of zip codes. No so good for people who's zip code is the Whole Foods of zip codes.
a reverse IP lookup should give you a good estimate and you can always ask the user to enter their address for more accurate price.
Surely this is outdated advice in the world of "Protect your privacy with NordVPN" all over youtube.
My home ISP has an exit point in a different city from where I live, so even without a VPN the IP lookup is only accurate to country level.
Nope. I hate when website use IP for anything, especially language selection. I travel all the time as well as use VPNs for work, and the idea that my IP represents anything other than what network Iâm connecting from is just lazy UX.
Yes letâs keep a shitty UX for most users because of a few abnormal users. Be honest, frequent travel and shopping over VPN is an edge case here. The vast majority of users are shopping and buying from home with a VPN.
Or better yet, give municipalities an incentive to stop layering a kinds of taxes. Just have a VAT and be done with it.
> Or better yet, give municipalities an incentive to stop layering a kinds of taxes. Just have a VAT and be done with it.
Switching our tax regime to VATs, effectively flattening 13,000+ sales tax jurisdictions down to 50, would be a monumental undertaking involving rethinking and reorganizing financing of literally everything below the federal level. And in the end it would solve a problem that is at best a minor annoyance to most Americans.
The juice ain't worth the squeeze.
> The vast majority of users are shopping and buying from home with a VPN.
I bet that's wrong, and that a huge chunk of shopping is from cell phones that usually have an effectively random IP when they're not at their home location.
It would be interesting to see the numbers. I know for my wife and I, most shopping is done at home on phone or tablet and connected to our home wifi. And even shopping away from home is generally in the same county, so taxes are the same (or close enough for an up-front estimate).
Be honest, frequent travel and shopping over VPN is an edge case here.
Everyone is an edge case in some form. You, included.
Just have a VAT and be done with it.
This just illustrates that you don't understand the that taxes have multiple purposes, and why taxes are the way they are. Attend a few city council meetings.
I understand why we levy taxes. Iâm not a moron (or a jerk). Other countries manage with a much simpler tax scheme; we can try and do the same.
Yeah, I see a lot of advice on here that websites should make some guesses and you can always correct them later if it turns out they're wrong.
That seems like terrible advice. Oh, the price is $X. And once you've entered all your info "just kidding." I'd much rather know there are some things not included up-front if they're not reasonably factored in.
Do you often order things for delivery at home while you're travelling? Then the price will change when you provide the delivery address â just like it does now.
Meanwhile, 99% of people will see the price they can expect to pay.
The one upside Iâm aware of for taxes being added separately is high awareness of what the sales tax rate is.
> The sticker price should be the final price.
God I wish this applied to buying cars as well
If youâre assertive enough, it is.
âOh, sorry, looks like weâd already applied the undercoat to your car.â
âAh, thanks!â
âThatâs an extra $400 charge.â
âIâm not paying for it. I didnât want it. You can have it back if you want.â
"Darn, sorry we can't make a deal. Hey look at all the people who need cars that are waiting!"
This is not as much of an upper hand as you think it is, often these shenanigans happen after sitting at the dealer for a couple hours while they do whatever it is they do. Do you value your time so little that you'll just walk out of a transaction over less than a 1% difference in cost?
The dealer knows how to play this game way better than you, if you walk into a dealership without having a plan to score a deal then you already lost
Yes, I have literally done exactly that thing and ended up with the dealer eating the price. The dealer has time and effort sunk into closing the deal, too, and theyâll almost always chose a bird in the hand.
And also-freaking-lutely would I walk instead of eating a BS charge. Sometimes it really is the principle of the thing. My principle is Iâm not paying a penny for something I didnât ask for. A dealership Iâd be caught dead doing business with will eat the bogus charges instead of losing a customer forever. Conversely, next time I need a Toyota, I have the business card of the guy Iâll buy it from and he doesnât even know it yet. He treated me well last time and his investment in that deal will keep paying him back.
Yeah. Last time I bought a car, at the last minute, it included "factory installed" extras that included a first aid kit for a car that wasn't built yet. I may or may not have actually walked (a couple of the options were actually useful) but I was "I'm not happy but I'll close the deal NOW if you add it to my trade-in" which they did.
Amazon Autos?
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Autos/b?node=10677469011
I'm more ok with "hidden" taxes, because the business is supposed to just hand that over. If they're putting something on the receipt that says "tax" and its not associated with an actual government-applied tax, that's just fraud., we don't need special rules to address that (yet). Its not hidden in an attempt to trick you into buying something at a higher cost. Its hidden because calculating the taxes requires additional information from the user.
Rules for thee but not for me.
You don't know what the sticker price is going to be until you know who is buying it from where for what.
Until then, all you can do is quote a price.
Welcome to reality, kid.
If you're buying it for resale, you don't owe tax. How do you put that on a price tag?
There's use tax. Depending on what you use a product you buy for, you might owe a different tax rate. How do you get a final price out of that?
You don't. When you quote a price, it's a quote.
I'd be interested to see whether a movie theater is considered an event. Our local one charges a convenience fee when buying online because ... they can?
I wish they banned all mandatory add-ons. If I don't have the choice it should be part of the base price.
The touristic railroad near me advertises a price, and then slaps on a mandatory Fuel Surcharge and Historic Preservation Fee.
Excuse me? How can I compare what I'm going to spend my money on if you're just allowed to lie to me?
Sidenote on fuel cost:
Fuel is almost back to pre-COVID costs https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=e...
and once you add in inflation it's even cheaper.
when you buy a ticket online, you are actually buying an option on the ticket, because you can go in and refund it at any time before the movie starts. the âconvenience feeâ is the option premium.
it would be fairer if this were opt-in. Some e commerce sites now allow you to pay a few extra dollars to have free returns, something similar would work for movies.
No, this is complicating things. A physical ticket can also be refunded prior to show time. It's not an option at all, it's just a fee. They are charging you to 1) pick your seat 2) not have to show up early 3) peace of mind knowing your spot is reserved - all of those things are conveniences in the purest sense of the word. In many cases, the fee is more closely related to a platform fee going to fandango or similar service.
Maybe some places operate that way, but I worked on payment systems for a few years and since then I figure most convenience fees come from credit card processing rates being passed on to the customer - at least that's how ours worked.
https://www.creditdonkey.com/interchange-rates.html
> How can I compare what I'm going to spend my money on if you're just allowed to lie to me?
You're not supposed to, that's the point. It's frankly shocking (and also not, but you know) how much businesses in America are allowed to bullshit you.
I signed on with a telco for high speed internet when we bought our house for $65 a month and by the time we got fiber and I could finally tell them to kick rocks, the bill had soared to nearly $200 for the exact same service over the course of 4 years. Why? Because they can, and go fuck yourself.
A hotel stay for a vacation was supposed to cost $851, but they demanded a $300 pre-authorization on top of that. Why? Because they can. I wasn't notified ahead of time, absolutely nowhere was this information given to me. And I could take that on fine, but why is this allowed? What if I wasn't so fortunate and was traveling by air, do I just sleep in a box because the hotel can't guarantee I'll be able to pay for $300 worth of room service I have no intention of buying?
I feel like this just happens everywhere now, I just expect it. I expect to get fucked over in one way or another, and on the one hand I'm sure it's my anxiety, but on the other hand there is so much expensive arbitrary nonsense that's just plunked down in front of me, and yeah, most of it I can handle fine, because I work in tech and make good wages. So I guess just fuck everyone who grew up at the income level I got, because I am fucking sure that my single mother trying her hardest as she was, wouldn't be able to get by if I was born like 15-20 years later than I was.
Edit: Oh and FUCK every politician who has ever farted out words something like "responsible consumption of healthcare" because sweet Jesus, healthcare billing is an utter nightmare. I don't think I have EVER, EVER in my entire life had some kind of medical event where I knew the costs going in that were then reflected afterwards. It's just all made the fuck up on the fly with no respect for the patients, when they are already stressed out and scared.
> You're not supposed to, that's the point. It's frankly shocking (and also not, but you know) how much businesses in America are allowed to bullshit you.
There's actually an administrative code in Washington that furniture (and maybe other) stores are only allowed to have a "Going out of business" sale _once a year_.
We could use one of those where I live. There was a furniture store off the side of the highway that over a period of like 4 years had at least 12 of them, and then would just change it's name each time.
Never bought anything from there since it seemed so incredibly sketchy. Then at last it went out of business properly and a U-Haul took over the space.
I need this for my internet provider, advertised price is $25* ** ***
Network access fee: $2.65
Municipal upgrade fee: $16.30
Fees end up costing nearly 80% of the entire bill. There are no taxes or gov surcharges of any kind.
*(with autopay discount)
**(with autopay direct deposit discount)
***(will not be reflected on first 3 bills)
ETA: here's their current promotion: https://i.imgur.com/TfwsdQv.png $20 for service, $20.49 in fees! fees are 102% of the supposed price!
Well, at least we're now in a modern enlightened time when there's a standard FCC-required Broadband Facts "label" that can be referred to. It does make it easier to compare.
It still seems kind of new and I can't find one for Spectrum (my ISP) or I'd share it here myself, but: I pay exactly $59.95 per month, as the service is advertised in my area, and that's that. There are no itemized fees/taxes on my bill.
I don't remember the last time I had an ISP with weird fees associated with it -- it seems like it has had to have been around a decade now, at least.
(Cellular, too: My cheapskate all-you-can-eat cellular service costs me $35 per month, flat -- to the penny.)
My Internet provider charges $50 per month exactly, and even the taxes are included! How cool is that? They aren't doing that out of goodness of their heart though. It is due to competition from T-Mobile 5G internet, which also has this policy.
Agreed. The FCC should act even more broadly. Why doesn't it?
Iâm not very confident this is going to survive our next âpopulistâ administration. Whatever faults you can attribute to the current administration, the FTC has taken many actions that have been pro consumer over the past 4 years.
I wish that "Online Coupon Price Tags" in stores would also be banned. I'm talking about these yellow price tags that show lower than "Club" prices, which are only valid if you collect a coupon online.
Like FTC, I estimate that banning these would save U.S. consumers millions of hours they currently spend searching and clicking on pointless coupons on their phones before making purchases. It would also increase happiness, as it's extremely annoying to pay $20 extra, knowing that a lower price is available if only you spent ten minutes struggling with a store's website on your phone.
Whoever invented this is evil and is destroying happiness.
>I'm talking about these yellow price tags that show lower than "Club" prices, which are only valid if you collect a coupon online.
Which store is that with the yellow price tags?
Safeway, Walgreens.
Kroger too
You have to log in with an account and âclipâ the imaginary coupons in their app for the price to apply when you scan your card
I'm less mad about those since it's basically just price discrimination. If you are price sensitive enough that you're willing to clip the coupon then you get the cheaper price.
those tags are working as intended - some people don't read the "online only" part, grab the item, assume the discount is applied at checkout, and end up paying full price. other people will download (and probably never uninstall) the spyware app and start feeding a juicy profitable data stream back to HQ.
because how are you ever going to stay in business doing something as niche as selling groceries without leaning hard into surveillance capitalism
Whoever invented this is evil and is destroying happiness.
Wonder if this going to be permanent or will be reverted as soon as the new FTC head is in office.
Time will tell - the change I'm really hoping will stick is the outlawing of non-competes without consideration.
I would not be hopeful. From AP news:
> Four of the FTCâs five commissioners voted to approve the rule. Commissioner Andrew Ferguson, â who is President-elect Donald Trumpâs choice to replace Khan, was the one dissenting vote.
https://apnews.com/article/ftc-junk-fees-rule-hotels-tickets...
One republican commissioner voted with the rule, and Ferguson dissented based on lame duck rule making, not the merits, while agreeing that the FTC rule making was valid for businesses like tickets and short term lodging.
That's a moronic dissent. It's either valid or not, lame duck or no.
Edit: The full decent reads like choosing fealty to Trump over good rule making. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/ferguson-junk-f...
A lot of people probably weigh this too much. Forcing companies to have some skin in the game is good. But, in practice, if a company really wants to enforce a non-compete--even with consideration--it's probably not great unless you're in a position and want to take a sabbatical with substantially reduced compensation.
This is absolutely true and when I read my first non-compete my dad calmly explained how unenforceable they are due to hardship exceptions and lack of specificity. However, I had a very business minded father to ask and most people don't. Non-competes have been abused to scare uninformed employees into staying in positions they want to leave or as revenge for someone leaving.
The fact that they're so often unenforceable is probably a decent argument that they're an irrelevant complication of labor interactions that we don't need anyways. They only ever made sense with executives and those folks usually have large sums of money attached to their compliance.
The few months when I actually had a non-compete in place it was quite specific and didn't apply to me.
But, yeah, as a generic thing below the level of a CEO becoming the CEO of a direct competitor (in which case lawyers have presumably put specific contracts in place if they're competent), they don't make a lot of sense beyond NDAs in play. No properly-managed company was ever going to pay me a bunch of money to not work at a random company in the industry who was probably a partner anyway.
Come January 21st, expect junk fees to explode. But donât worry, as long as you make at least $10,000,000 per year, youâll get a huge tax cut.
I'm glad (if it doesn't get reversed by the next administration).
But I'm also baffled... how did this take this long?
Why wasn't it done way back when they did it for airline tickets, in 2012?
Because details matter and are hard. If you don't get the details just right a court will strike the whole thing down for good reason.
Itâd be a shame to ask hard work of our government that spends a trillion of our dollars every year
They did do the hard work - it took many years.
The House passed a bill [1] earlier this year covering these fees for hotels.
It passed 384 to 25 suggesting there is pretty good bipartisan support for ending such fees at least for hotels. Here was the vote breakdown:
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6543Not sure about going all the way back to 2012, but maybe they were more worried about the Mayan calendar? /s
But as far as under this administration, it seems like it took half the term to right the ship and get the leadership moving in the right direction. I think a second term would have been impressive.
Lina Khan is my second hero in life after Evariste Galois.
Even if they throw her out it wonât change what sheâs done: she put fear in the bellies of some truly terrible people who had almost forgot what the word ârestraintâ means.
Ms Khan, I salute you.
Agree. Somewhat. But given that Elon Musk (who wants to shut down the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau completely) is likely to have a lot of say in these type of things, I think they'll forget that fear.
And the public will just accept arbitrary oppression with no limit?
No, the investor class will arrive at the negotiating table one way or another on a long enough timeline. It will be up to them if they still have legs to walk on.
The really scary fascists arenât stupid: Thiel and those guys are buying bunkers in New Zealand as fast as the checks clear. They understand something that the American public lost sight of for a moment: the American Public is terrifying, the American public is slow to wake but arbitrarily brutal once roused. Pushing the American public into a corner has been the last mistake of a great many men better than Elon Musk.
From the FTC (9 points, 1 comment) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42441347
The fact that sensible and fair rules like this that favor the consumer don't get anywhere in the usa is proof of the regulatory capture by the corporate elite. The us isn't a democracy, because it isn't ruled by the people, it is ruled by the corporation and rich.
Americans keep voting for rich assholes who oppress them while telling them they are giving them freedom.
Do restaurant service fees next! "Here's the bill, with a 10% service fee added so we can pay our staff more without raising menu prices."
This is great if it gets rid of the "resort fee" or "urban fee" that I have had to pay at hotels. Happened last week. An extra $40 a night. It is almost impossible to refuse and find a new hotel right when you are checking in.
I used to work for a major airline many years ago. I remember when they introduced these crazy fees e.g., seat change fee. I was really disappointed then and soon left. I learned Don Carty then joined Dell who soon started their Byzantine ordering process. I was again disappointed. I still buy Dell monitors because I like them but I never buy from their website.
I remember an episode of the TV show Happy Days when the restaurant owner started charging money to use the toilet stall. It was a sad joke and many businesses are following suit.
Gotta love that TicketMaster convenience fee that is for online ticket purchases --- which you still have to pay if you get your ticket at the door, because that is also convenient!
Official release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/12/...
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42441347)
Seems like a no brainer. Can they tackle sales tax next?
and service fees at restaurants. The price on the menu in Seattle or SF is ~25% lower than what the product actually costs.
Minnesota banned these this year! It goes into effect Jan 1st. https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/05/20/governor-signs-junk...
Nice, I wonât be annoyed when going out to eat now.
Imagine if that guy became VP...
We have a very nice little island of sanity up here :)
California was set to ban that, until Scott Weiner carved out an exception for restaurants.
His name sounds exactly like someone who'd sabotage a public benefit.
Count the service charge toward what you wouldâve tipped.
Wait staff reading this: bosses at restaurants like this are stealing from you if that doesnât go straight to you. I tip very well, but Iâm not tipping twice. And yes, if itâs a âservice chargeâ, thatâs the same as saying âtipâ from the customerâs perspective.
Would boycott get a chance? The honest restaurants bragging "NO FEES" would gather more customers and the others follow.
Wondering, is there already US places that works without tips like in most other places ? (Owner pays a decent salary to its employees, include that in all products they sell and donât expect tips)
Yeah, I love that healthcare surcharge at SFO restaurants.
Healthcare surcharge: 6%
tip: 20%
tax: 8.625%
= total: 34.625%
The healthcare surcharge is taxable, because it shouldn't exist, it should just be a 6% increase in the menu price.
what is a healthcare surcharge?
SF has something called Healthy SF where employers have to offer health insurance plans, or pay into a city-managed health account. I think the last time I looked, for a lot of businesses, it's basically a $2.25/hr raise for your employees.
edit: The best part is, if your employees don't use the money (maybe they don't know about it or don't have any health care expenses), the business can eventually reclaim it...
The restaurant association balked at this, and encouraged businesses to list out the increased cost as a separate line item on the receipt, instead of raising menu prices, basically raising a middle finger and saying "see what you idiots voted for, now you pay for it!" I don't know why I'd be mad that I have to pay for someone's health care. That's sort of how it works, doesn't it?
Since then, it has taken on a life of its own. Some places call it a health care surcharge. Others call it a SF surcharge, or a cost adjustment, or inflation fee. It's not a tax, it's not a service charge, it's not anything but whatever arbitrary number the business wants to charge without raising their menu price. And thus, it's taxable.
Not likely; sales tax is extremely complicated in the US. There are 13,000 sales tax jurisdictions, and many of them have different and incompatible rules for things like sales tax nexus.
I think legitster is suggesting that the sticker price on the product should be the price paid, rather than a uniform sales tax code. If the seller knows what to charge the buyer, then they know what they need to put on the sticker.
Local retailers would oppose this in very strong terms as a thumb on the scale in favor of online retailers.
Online retailers would presumably still be able to show pricing before knowing a shipping address, so their pricing would be pre-tax. That would make the apparent price differential even greater, and on every item.
I think this would make the marketplace less clear for consumers.
Online retailers could be required to use the best available estimate of the user's location to calculate the tax, like they do for ads.
So if they are logged in with an address on file, it could be that. If not, they could use geolocation, with a note that the tax is estimated. And let the user input a location in a box to show the exact tax.
> they could use geolocation, with a note that the tax is estimated
So we'd go from the current regime where the displayed price is wrong to another regime where the displayed price is wrong? Allegedly, something like 40%+ of Americans use VPNs. They would pretty much always see the wrong price.
In practice, the ramification of this would be that your local indie retailers (where we are much less likely to be persistently logged in) would be forced to incorrectly show higher prices to a set of people, while the giant retailers who already have your billing info can show you 100% accurate pricing all the time, regardless of VPN.
I don't see any clear wins in that scenario.
40% of Americans using VPNs cannot possibly be true.
Sounded off to me, but I wasn't able to find a better number when I looked. Maybe it's counting work computers where the stack is maintained by IT staff?
Oddly enough, the average EU consumer has no problem understanding that the label price is the full price of a purchase, while online prices might include extra stuff such as delivery.
Maybe you're just less intelligent than the average consumer and need some more protection? Or is it something else?
> Maybe you're just less intelligent than the average consumer
I'm not one to police tone, but really? Did it make you feel better to say that?
> is it something else?
Yes, the something else is that you're missing the point that my comment was specifically about the disparity in the prices large online retailers would be able to display (e.g. without sales tax) versus what offline retailers would display (with sales tax).
If Amazon and a local retailer are both aiming for the same $1,000 for an item net of tax, this would mean that Amazon could display $1,000 as the price while my local retailer would have to list it for (say) $1,100. I don't think local retailers would like that very much, even though the consumer would end up paying $1,100 either way. You may disagree.
A business already has to take care of the sales tax. So they can just show it on the price tag.
No they cannot. Taxes are not uniform. Walmart probably won't deal with this, but in many states business (read farmers) do not pay sales tax on some items (read likely to be used on a farm) and so stores that want to sell to business will have the ability to verify you are a business to give that discount.
It is worse for online where until you log in they have no clue what taxes will apply. If you are buying a gift for someone in a different area I don't know what tax rules apply but there is good odds they won't know until you get to the shipping information what the real taxes are.
> but in many states business (read farmers) do not pay sales tax on some items (read likely to be used on a farm)
The legislation in most of europe clearly handles this - the price displayed is for the intended customer. If you go into B&Q (home depot equivalent), you'll see prices including sales tax. If you go next door to a timber merchant none of the prices have sales tax included. If you're a business, you don't pay the sales tax. The businesses know what their taxes are, and are required to have accurate accounts anyway. For those that are maybe numerically challenged - they'll never pay more than they see on the sticker.
> It is worse for online where until you log in they have no clue what taxes will apply.
Enter your shipping address to see pricing. Exactly the same as it is now. Give an estimate based on IP. Exactly how it works in Europe, which has the same problem.
The issue with online sales is real, but customers exempt from sales tax could just have their final price lowered. That would be the opposite of the current situation. Since there are many fewer tax-exempt sales, and tax-exempt buyers are presumably more sophisticated and less price-sensitive, this would be a net win for customers.
If you sell a widget in a store, you MUST be able to compute the sales tax. Otherwise, you can't sell it.
And if you can do that, then you might as well print it on the price tag (along with pre-tax price if you want). No buts.
Ditto for online, after you get the customer's ZIP code.
My favorite example of this lunacy is the restaurant nearby that sells pies. If they box your pie for you to take home, it's a grocery item and not taxed. If they give you utensils to eat it in the store, it's a restaurant meal and therefore taxed.
They literally can't know the price until you tell them whether you'd like a fork with it.
Now, this restaurant works around it by having both prices listed, but I can imagine a million freaking variants of that for an online sale: "you have to pay our local taxes, but almost maybe yours, unless you check out on a Sunday between noon and 5PM, which is a tax holiday on your block (but not your neighbors' across the road), so understand that the price may change between when you add it to your cart and when you click the 'pay' button."
I'm only a little bit exaggerating.
Then put two freaking price tags: "pies to go" and "eat here". Problem solved.
There are zero legitimate reasons not to show true prices.
Stopped reading after the first paragraph, huh.
> And if you can do that, then you might as well print it on the price tag (along with pre-tax price if you want).
Fun fact: sales tax rates are not stable. Our state publishes quarterly tax changes at the county level; city-level changes are presumably too numerous for the state to publish in the same format.
Inclusive pricing can obviously be done in-store, but it also more or less ensures that some of the items in your store will have incorrect prices some of the time.
You can't print the price on a price tag because different customer pay different prices.
Bullshit. First, you absolutely CAN JUST PUT TWO PRICES on a price tag. Moreover, business customers (in a grocery shop, yeah right) can just get a discount at a point of sale.
Move to Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire or Oregon. No sales tax.
most states have some trick.
I think you have to look at it wholistically:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Median_h...
Not a trick, just they get their income from other sources / taxes. But we're specifically talking about knowing the final price you will pay, in advance, which requires knowing the sales tax.
nitpick: "holistically"
Lol, I didn't even think when I wrote it that way. That said, it seems to be in the dictionary as an alternate spelling of holistic.
I guess the english language lets this stuff happen a lot, but not alot. I definitely did it by accident (not "on accident"!)
That's a state matter so not really within the FTC's jurisdiction I think.
Luckily some states (OR, AK, others) don't have a sales tax.
WTF! Definitely paid corporate shill. Legalized corruption in the USA. "A judge in Texas blocked a rule that would cap credit card late fees, and an appeals court in New Orleans blocked a requirement that airlines disclose baggage and other fees upfront."
This is awesome. There's more to do, but it's a step in the right direction. This law should really apply to all merchants in all industries, as the original 2023 proposal stated (allegedly). Still, I'll take it.
Great! My wife was reading me ticket prices for an event on Ticketmaster yesterday, I kept telling her she needs to add them to the cart and start checkout to know the real price. She did just that and to my surprise the price didn't change at all!
Would love to see what gymnastics the incoming FTC head uses to undo this rule.
Itâs a start. Iâm bummed at how narrowly scoped this is. When the RFC period was open I wrote in to highlight how apartments charge surprise pet rent fees that donât appear until the application process.
i can't remember the last time i paid face value for a concert ticket. the scalping is absurd. it's worse than any fees, by far.
Im all for this. Iâm worried though that now the junk fees will just be added to the normal price without ultimately changing anything.
No, the reason they tack on the fee as a "tax" is literally to confuse and otherwise mislead the public to the true cost of the product they're buying, or mislead where the money is directed. they're buying from. If you believe in the Tennant's of capitalism at all, then you must have clear price representation.
Nitpick: "tenets"
Nitpick: Scottish lager only please
Isn't Airbnb a good example of this? In some locations you have to open each listing to get the true price and it's a huge waste of time. In locations, what you see on the map is the real value, cleaning and other, fees included.
I wish sales taxes would be added - some cities charge very large taxes on hotel rooms and so it might be worth staying in a hotel not far away with more reasonable taxes.
Market actors are allowed to charge whatever they want. Price controls are super bad. It's not the role of the state to mandate a specific price. It is the role of the state to make sure prices are fair and transparent. Deception cannot be tolerated in an efficient market.
I mean, they will be, but that's the point. No more surprises. You can actually compare prices without going through checkout first.
That does change things though, it gives you a fair point of comparison.
And that comparison is important - when junk fees are allowed more honest companies suffer because consumers might shop around and end up choosing the option that is actually more expensive. Those consumers might be on page 12/13 of a form and just accept the fee to avoid the hassle - or they may assume everyone (including what looked like a more expensive competitor) is baking the fees in late in the process and not bother investigating deeper.
Hidden fees create market inequities.
Hopefully this does away with the fraudulent âcleaning feeâ when you book a hotel for $200 and then get a charge for $450.
Maybe. If they document how dirty the room was after you leave, and how clean it was before hand they can get away with this. Generally smoke smell is the only thing they would bother doing this for though. If you just leave the normal mess behind they shouldn't be charging extra.
Yeah Iâm talking about an existing practice where the fee applies to all bookings and is just a way to fraudulently advertise the booking price.
Doesn't look like they got to DoorDash hidden fees in this decision?
Now waiting for a webapp that autoscans your bill for junk fees and can report them to the FTC.
Even the most fundamentalist of free market fundamentalists should be cheering transparency in pricing. The price signal works best when it's not obfuscated.
Can we be done with "resort fees" and "taxes" as well? Hotel prices should include all of this
> The rule would require service fees, resort fees, and other charges commonly added to bookings to be included in advertised prices.
Sounds like that's what will be happening if the rule sticks.
Now do the same with airline companies. WizzAir charges the crap out of you for everything they can. Do not fly with WizzAir!
A recent WizzAir flight was advertised (when I searched for the route on their website) for âŹ21. I rejected all optional extras, and that was the total price I paid.
No checked luggage, probably only a small cabin bag that fitted under the seat in front, no priority boarding, no seat selection.
It's a budget service, but the advertised prices aren't deceptive.
Trust me, you got lucky, they "randomly" selected passengers with those kind of bags for inspection due to measures, 1mm above? charged! Emphasis on randomly, because the pattern was simple: foreigners? charged, locals? go on. We've saw a poor guy squeeze the hell out of his backpack to no avail, it fitted the measuring box, still, charged because "you had to squeeze it"; guess what, plenty of room under the seat, the guy could put two of them. On me? bag had wheels, foreigner, automatically selected for inspection, took the wheels away, still charged because "it had wheels first". I've flew a dozen companies, not even Ryanair, the low of the lowest treats passengers like this.
A significant difference here is that the airline fees are ostensibly optional. You could, in theory, fly Spirit with nothing except the clothes on your back and they wouldn't charge you extra. But with event ticket sales and the like, there is often no possible way to avoid the fees. That means there's a much stronger argument for requiring that the fees be rolled into the price.
That's not in the US so unaffected.
...for the next four weeks, anyways. Good effort nonetheless!