Ditto for sales tax. In some countries, sales tax is expected or required to be included in the listed price. This makes cash transactions significantly simpler.

Wow, isn't it in USA? Do I understand you correctly: I see a "price" on a product, and have to manually multiply it by 1.2 (or whatever taxes are in USA) to know, what it actually will cost me?

Yes. Sales tax is levied by the state, not federally, so in every state sales tax is different and which items are subject to sales tax changes.

For example, in Massachusetts, the sales tax on most products is 6.25% so when purchasing most things you must multiply by 1.0625 to figure out how much it will cost. Most uncooked food does not have sales tax, but food served by restaurants does.

When eating at a restaurant, you're supposed to tip 15-20% on the total bill pre-tax, though a lot of people tip on the post-tax price depending on how cheap/generous they are. Many restaurants calculate the tip for you, but certainly not most.

Oh it's worse than that, in the USA it vary by state (even by city I think) and by type of products so you have to apply a different multiplier each time

In Minnesota for example, there's a state tax, and starting in 2000 additional optional taxes for the county and city. People don't bother calculating it, they just wait for the bill and look to see what percentage was applied if they're curious.

Yes.

In the US if you go out for dinner and order the caesar salad (listed at $6), the skirt steak (listed at $15), and a glass of the house red (listed at $8) you will be presented a bill for $29 + sales tax, in NYC for example the bill would come to $31.58. Then you will be expected to leave between 15% and 20% on top of that as a tip, so generally you would be expected to pay $36-$38 for that meal.

Yes. In addition, the tax rate varies by state, by county, by city, and also by sub-city zones (1 mall in the city I went to college has an additional city tax that only applies to that mall).

In theory the merchant can include taxes in his advertised price, nothing prevents him from doing this but it is quite rare.

It also makes raising sales taxes more opaque, and reduces the political accountability (and cost) for doing it.

In Germany sales tax changed once in the past 20 years. Everyone noticed it.

In the US it's set at the state and city levels. It varies so widely from city to city that unless you're a resident you'd never notice a change.

The changes are frequent, too. Since they're so localized, they're often heavily involved in local politics. Recently my city was very divided over a half-cent tax hike to build a better high school.

In Michigan, the sales tax rate is specified in the state constitution and can only be changed by holding a statewide vote. The rate last changed in 1994 and 1963 (1963/1964 was when the modern constitution was put in place). A proposal to increase it failed this month, with no votes from 80% of people that bothered to vote (~20% turnout).

It would be interesting to see a survey of what it takes to change the rate in various states.

Michigan has a single tax jurisdiction, which specifies the tax rate.

In other States, like WA for example, sales tax is a composite of jurisdictions: State, County or City, Special Tax Jurisdiction.

There is a graphical representation of Tax Jurisidictions in the US: http://www.taxrates.com/calculator/

Note: I work for the company.

It's far better than having no idea what your items will actually cost at the checkout.

I remember walking into a McDonalds somewhere in the US deserts, and ordering three mcchickens off the $1 menu. A cheap way to get lots of biomass when travelling on a shoestring. "Certainly sir, that'll be $3.24". But it's 3 items... off the $1 menu... which should be $3. I honestly think that half the hot air around taxes in the US is because the mechanisms for actually handling them are irritating. Lots of loose change, ridiculously complex tax environments for accountants, inability to know beforehand the final price of something...

Back here in Australia, if something costs $5, that's it. It doesn't matter to you whose cut goes where. You want the object, it's $5. Not $5.40, discoverable later in the chain. The tax in this system is less opaque, because it's right there, included in the price. It's not something that suprises you at the end as an irritating thing making the process more complex.

In any case, when you buy something, no-one complains that the retailer made 20%, the distributors made 30%, and the wholesaler made 40%. People only whine about they government's 10%. Most people are utterly clueless about which business parties get what sort of cut (witness the endless complaints about online app stores 'stealing' 30%...), so why should specifying how much the government makes be special? If your receipt instead told you how much the wholesaler made, or your system added on the wholesaler cut after the sticker price, everyone would be complaining about those greedy wholesalers.

And, as others have said, sales tax certainly has accountability. Australia's GST has been 10% since it was introduced in the mid-90s (replacing a confusing hodge-podge of existing sales taxes). It hasn't changed, and the political parties fear changing it because it is a huge political negative to do so.

I was, frankly, shocked when I went to Dallas and discovered I had to pay 30% more than the price on the menu due to a combination of tax and tip.

Ditto for phone plans. Base price + unknowable amount of fees