Comment by Amorymeltzer
3 months ago
Some interesting complications with rounding I had not heard about before were mentioned here, worth noting I think, especially given the prominence of SNAP in the news lately:
>Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS).
>In addition, the law covering the federal food assistance program known as SNAP requires that recipients not be charged more than other customers. Since SNAP recipients use a debit card that’s charged the precise amount, if merchants round down prices for cash purchases, they could be opening themselves to legal problems and fines, said Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for NACS.
>“Rounding down on all transactions presents several challenges beyond the loss of an average of 2 cents per transaction,” Lenard said. “We desperately need legislation that allows rounding so retailers can make change for these customers.”
They can round down the card transactions too if it’s really a problem to charge differing amounts.
For those that seriously think this would be a major problem there was a comedy skit circulating in Australia when this happened. A guy would push his car to the petrol pump, fill with 2c of petrol, rounded down to 0. The guy at the counter just laughed at it. You could in theory do this 1000 more times (would take hours) for $20 of free petrol. At least until the worker got sick of it and enforced the whole right to refuse service.
> enforced the whole right to refuse service.
This is what everyone forgets. If you can't provide exact change, then you can refuse service.
It’s a self-service gas station. Refuse…yourself? You pumped the gas before paying.
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I had this same idea and seem to recall even trying it, but it was mostly thwarted when they added minimum liquid delivery amounts.
In the Netherlands cash payments get rounded to the nearest 5 cents, in both directions. Card payments are not rounded. If I’m not mistaken, you can still demand exact change according to the law and you’re allowed to pay the exact amount (cents are still legal tender). Most merchants wouldn’t be able to give you exact change, so it depends on the situation what would happen. I’ve never heard of such a situation happening, though.
You are mistaken. Merchants are allowed to round to the nearest 5 cents and you can’t do anything about it (except pay by card). Of course, budget stores like Lidl and Aldi still use them but any other corporation is not going to care.
http://www.nederlandsemunten.nl/Artikelen_over_munten/De_cen...
Thanks for the correction. So only the part about legal tender was correct, which is probably what I was confused with. The relevant part:
> The one and two cent coins will remain legal tender, and retailers can choose whether or not to participate. The Netherlands cannot declare the smallest coins worthless on its own in Europe; this must be arranged in Brussels.
The government page about this: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/betalingsverkeer/vr...
> Of course, budget stores like Lidl and Aldi still use them but any other corporation is not going to care.
What do you mean with this? Surely the Lidl and Aldi don’t give exact change by default in the Netherlands in 2025?
If someone demands exact change is it allowed to give them more? What if you don't have the exact change?
Apparently I was wrong about that part. Only the part about cents still being legal tender was correct. So you can pay the exact amount, but not demand the exact change.
You could always refuse service, I guess.
For the SNAP law, could they just round down SNAP purchases in the same way to be compliant?
The SNAP equal treatment rule requirement works in both directions: Prices cannot be higher or lower for SNAP recipients. As a retailer, there is an option to request a waiver, though.
IMO, this is a strawman that is either going to be ignored or fixed easily.
The law did not account for every possible situation. Removal of the penny from national currency is clear a situation where minor variations on otherwise normal transactions would not be in violation of the intent of the law.
It'd be like TSA griping that your 100ml bottle of mouthwash was overfilled by .1ml because of slight variations in the filling process. Nobody cares.
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How does this work with coupons, discount for loyalty card holders, etc.?
Presumably that's fine because a SNAP recipient has access to those same discounts. So wouldn't this be the same - the "cash rounding" discount is available to SNAP and people paying cash?
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So, that sounds like a yes, they could round up or down SNAP purchases just like cash purchases.
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They probably will, but that means a POS software update on a tight deadline.
It's not like pennies just cease existing. You just can't buy them from the mint anymore.
I bet if you give customers an easy and free way to deposit change or to turn it into larger denominations you easily get enough pennies to delay ther update a couple years
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Or, in reality, most commodity POS systems are actually able to support various countries and tax regimes, and is plenty ready to be configured a variety of ways and work perfectly fine in changing systems.
For example, the exact same physical hardware in American supermarkets for self checkout is also used in countries like Australia that have more coins than the US, and the machines literally do not have enough coin slots for every coin, so they just don't dispense certain coins in that place.
The POS market is rather robust and has been around the block for quite a while and has no problem managing quite literally arbitrary fees. Businesses in our city added a "cost of living" fee to all bills (just raise prices FFS, so dumb) and they didn't have to go out and buy new POS systems, because POS systems are very configurable.
Like, other industries that have been selling software products for decades are actually kind of good at their jobs and it's really just software as a service that reliably makes garbage. POS software can handle all sorts of things you probably don't even realize.
Go lookup all the functionality that Square advertises their POS systems have, and understand that they are new entrants to the market and do not have all the features that legacy vendors have built up over decades. The functionality has been so thoroughly figured out for so long and so straightforward, that a POS you bought in the 90s is likely still fit for service today.
Meanwhile, retailers are actually open to improving and modernizing their POS infrastructure regularly. They added those coupon printers to existing stacks and didn't have to do anything special because POS systems are absolute legends of interoperability. They use extremely standardized ports, including a special supplementary power version of USB, and are very tolerant to mix and match hardware. POS vendors even sell their hardware without forcing you to buy their software. The system is very open.
Right, but getting fined in this situation means the government is incompetent. They should just tell retailers the "right" thing to do and not fine any retailers that follow the guidelines.
The idea that this is complicated legally is an example of why so many Americans are so frustrated with their government. Common sense should rule the day, not mindless legalism.
The issue with "common sense" is there's no way to run anything based on it because you'll get 100 different ideas of what that means in any situation. 90% of customers would be fine with the rounding to the nearest 5 cent plan but there's a streak of stubborn people who'd refuse to accept it and waste some legal time trying to get proven 'right' so the stores want legal clarity so they don't have to deal with that.
I think they should just change the prices to make it work out after tax. It’s not that hard.
It’s the same issue for sub-penny rounding which happens without issue. It’s the same principle.
just make the price a multiple of five cents
State and local taxes make this infeasible
It's just American custom to exclude some taxes from the posted price. Many countries include all taxes in the price, something I've always wished we would do in America. After that, I'd love to see the elimination of the custom of always ending fuel cost per gallon in 9/10 of a cent.
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> State and local taxes make this infeasible
I don’t see why that would be the case? In my country, most prices with VAT (which is what you’re charged) are nice, round numbers, but not the price without VAT.
I suppose the stores set a target price, and then adjust it a bit to make the price + VAT a “nice” number.
Is there a reason that couldn’t be done to make all prices + VAT multiples of 5c?
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Retailers don't, like, have to add sales tax on top of listed prices.
They just have to pay it.
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Just show the price including tax. (half-sarcastic, because obviously that would be an unpopular change for sellers because it makes the visible number go up, but it would solve two problmes...)
They could still set the post-tax price to something that results in round numbers, at downside of the pre-tax price having more decimals.
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So, lobby for changes to the structure of those taxes so that's not a problem. Tthe simple solution is changing them from surcharges adding a percent onto posted prices to making them a percentage taken out of the posted price; so that coin availability is only an issue in the improbable event that you are paying your sales tax bill in cash.
Of course, retailers don't want tax-inclusive posted prices, but... ::shrug::
It's the same way with the penny.
Tax on a 0.99 item isn't coming out to an exact penny multiple.
So stores are already dealing with this situation
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Oh no, a made up problem that's easily solved by changing the price slightly in any direction, whatever will we do.
Well I'm guessing that's about to change isn't it? unless you always pay by card, and I don't think that is the intent of this law. I assume they will always just round up and make citizens suck it up, because laws general favor the business and corporate classes, at least the recent ones.
You can price as a multiple of nickels and round the tax separately. It’s the same thing as with sub-penny rounding.
With some 5th grade algebra, one can adjust the total of a transaction to result in a round number after taxes.
Besides that, the law (at least where I live) is that the tax must be paid, but it does not specify by whom. It's completely feasible for a retailer to pay the 2 cent difference in the tax and charge the customer a round number.
Is this really the state of American education where a percentage calculation makes a very simple situation literally impossible? You can think of no other way to overcome the complicated calculations of checks notes x times 1.06?
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