Comment by estimator7292
7 hours ago
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?
Even with just a 6% tax, you end up with prices that need 4 digits of precision after the decimal (e.g.: $11.6494). That issue extends over a wide range of pre-tax/input prices, so one would have to DRASTICALLY change the prices so that the price including 6% tax rounds to even a penny, let alone a nickel.
While you could calculate a price that (after tax) would round a single item to the nearest nickel, it's completely IMPOSSIBLE to do so with unknown numbers of multiple items.
In addition, tax rates in the real world aren't just single-digit percentages. They have precision of 1/1000th of a percent, making such a calculation much more challenging.
Arizona: 10.725% Hawaii: 4.712% Minnesota: 7.875% etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_Stat...
And sales tax rates can be different from ONE CITY BLOCK TO THE NEXT, so a company with more than one location would find it IMPOSSIBLE to advertise their prices at all.