More than $5.00?

[protege]

If you really want to have fun... try explaining to tourists the difference in sales tax among the various counties in SW PA. It's 7% in Allegheny County, 6% in Washington County, and (I think) 5% in Greene County, however that might be 6% as well. People sometimes freak over paying a few more pennies when they come into Pittsburgh; for that we can thank those idiots in Harrisburg

[Bella_Vixen]

Holy cow you want flavor Bella? You should have been living in Rapid 15 - 20 years ago when we were having the 'duck yuck' problem with the city water, which made artisian well water taste like fine spring water. Lovely sulpher smelling crap right from you kitchen faucet. <shudder>

duck yuck aka lake weed

You make it sound ALMOST irresistable...but I think I'll stick with my crypto water. I can't even drink the radiation water at work.

[Mark Healey]

I heard it explained that since there are different State taxes, there'd be different prices in national chains

It's worse than that. The sales tax structures varry from state to state. Some things are taxed in some states that aren't taxed in others. In some states it is only a state tax while in others there are county and city sales taxes included.

I'll talk about where I live, California.

There is the state part, the county part, the city part and in some cases special discrict part. Unprepared food and prescription drugs are tax free but pretty much everything else is taxed. Some big ticket items are taxed according to where the purchaser lives rather than where it is bought (this is largely to protect car dealers in high tax cities). If the state runs a surplus for a specific amount of time the sales tax rate goes down automatically. Then the legislature bumps it up as soon as they can. County and local rates are pretty volitale too.

So, in a used book store with an inventory of 50,000 individually priced books changing the price for each book every time the taxes change is impossible.

[AFpheonix]

No sales tax here, what it's marked at is what it costs...


Income and property taxes, however......

[rdp78]

I also notice that most over-the-counter meds aren't taxed here either (I think vitimans are taxed 5% but I might be wrong) and I think it might have to do with prescription meds being so expensive.

Oh, I have plastic bottles that I just fill with tap water and I really don't drink bottle water unless it has a fruit flavor in it.