Death and Taxes. No doubt on either. As far as taxes go, it is not paying the tax that bothers me, it’s when the tax revenues are misappropriated or used to buy favors, or wasted on the poorly devised and mismanaged civil rights flavor of the day program. That seems as sure to happen as death. It’s the reason human societies fail in an otherwise perfect scenario of fairness and equitable distribution. Greed, ego, low self-esteem, aka: human failings, corrupt and waste our hard earned money.
Still maintain that it is unconstitutional for a state to impact interstate commerce by forcing out of state entities to collect tax for them. Or to make their residents pay taxes to them for purchases made in other states.
Should go back to how it was; only if a business had a real (not internet) presence in a state was it obliged to collect sales tax from residents of that state.
Or to make their residents pay taxes to them for purchases made in other states.
Your duly elected legislators enacted a use tax. It’s easier to compel fewer businesses to collect it (as a condition of their business license) than unreliable self-reporting by each resident. Technically it isn’t a sales tax, but a use tax you are and always were required to pay, just collected by the seller.
With distributed internet hosting, cloud-based hosting, affiliate sellers located who knows where, it just becomes impossible for a business to prove they don’t have nexus, when the cost is trivial to use software that can calculate the proper taxing jurisdictions and eliminate any risk of tax litigation with states and taxing jurisdictions (special taxes or breaks, like back-to-school tax-free days or on certain items or “economic development zones”) over the minutiae of “nexus”.
@mike808 Calling it a ‘use tax’ does not change what it is. You buy something from another state and if you don’t pay sales tax to that other state, illannoy declares that you must pay a tax to illannoy based on the sale price of that item. Technically (and I know there was controversy about this) if you buy something in another state during a tax holliday in that state and bring it into illannoy, you are required to pay that tax to illannoy.
If it acts like a sales tax, costs like a sales tax, is calculated like a sales tax, and is conditional on if you paid another state’s sales tax, then it shouldn’t matter what my duly elected state government calls it… it is a sales tax that has impact on interstate commerce imposed by one state on the commerce of its residents with another state. It is clearly unconstitutional. But it has been allowed by people/judges who consider the states’ ability to collect any possible source of revenue to be more important than the individual citizen (resident) of that state’s ability and right to retain as much as possible of what they have earned (which the state also taxes) and freedom to choose who they engage in commerce with.
Perhaps coming soon to a county or municipality near you. Because, why not? If the Constitution’s restrictions don’t matter at a state level, why shouldn’t lower levels of government get in on the action? Maybe they can call it an equity tax or a make-up tax… just so long as they don’t call it a ‘sales tax’ it should be all good.
@duodec I sure hope you don’t plan to use any of the government provided benefits that were paid for by taxes you seem to think you’re entitled to freeload off of other taxpayers.
Things like interstate highway system, national parks that weren’t turned into open pit strip mines or razed to the ground to provide the cheap lumber your house was built with (you paid full price, foregoing your taxpayer funded discount, right?).
Oh, and I’m sure youll pass on that taxpayer funded covid vaccine, right?
You clearly are clueless as to all the benefits you have been enjoying all these years paid for by taxpayers. Run a company? Where did your employees get their education? Taxpayer-funded schools and universities? Expect a police force to show up if you’re a victim or need coordination in a disaster? Ever had a flood wipe out your home, your business, your customers homes, your employees homes?
If taxes are too high in the US, then go back to wherever your ancestors came from.
@duodec
On a deeper level, that we pay taxes is the reason money exists. No taxes means there is no dollar, or an economy or any of the financial constructs that power the world economies.
@mike808 Nobody said anything about not paying taxes at all. We pay too much tax, between exorbitant sales taxes in this county (not surprising since it is basically a criminal enterprise masquerading as a government), state income taxes (which keep getting jacked up temporarily then the temp increases become permanent every time), federal income taxes, excise taxes on numerous items, gas taxes (sales and ‘extra’), tolls that were supposed to go away once the roads they helped fund were paid for but never seem to go away and just increase (dramatically at times) while the tollway authority buys helicopters and luxurious offices… ad nauseum. We haven’t done it this year but in the past we’ve done the check on 'when in the year the money you make is actually your own (effectively all taxes paid) and it has been as late as mid-late May. Runs into June when we make a large purchase (car) in this county and so pay several more percent in sales tax plus whatever new car taxes and fees they have stuck on that neighboring counties seem to manage without.
That’s 38-42% of everything we make (except for tax deferred retirement accounts, which are becoming an increasingly eyed target for those who want to tax everything) going to pay for all the stuff you listed, as well as lining the pockets of the crook county crooks and their friends and family and patronage workers.
Tollway even charges a ‘cash tax’; if you don’t get an ipass you pay double the toll because its so inconvenient for them to handle cash that is supposed to be good for all debts public and private. Plus they get to track your travels with the ipass.
My particular issue is that the ‘use’ and interstate collection of sales taxes are violations, as far as I and many others are concerned, of a clear restriction that the Constitution placed on the states. And they are getting away with it. Please don’t presume that my anger at this violation is an indication of being one of the anarchists who don’t want any government or services and don’t want to pay for anything.
I just think that the way thing are going, there will be literally nothing, no action, no activity, no trade or purchase that isn’t going to be subject to one or more taxes in a few more decades. And it still won’t be enough for all the levels of government.
@duodec I misread your rant as Reaganomics “get rid of government”, not Trumanesque “buck stops here” accountability and careful stewards of common treasure.
The root is big money corruption in politics, with corrupt politicians (Looking at the Republicans going back to Nixon - AG Bill Barr’s cohort) that have feathered their nests and furthered their corruption over decades, often as ransom for holding the democrats hostage “fair and balanced” bullshit, like your charity and good works are an acceptable “balance” to my corruption and grift, with mine just a little bit more, every iteration.
Citizens United, Garland denied the SC and Kavanaugh rammed through. Along with hundreds of unqualified ideologue right-wing activist judges just as much on the take as the Senators putting them there.
And the Grifter-in-Chief himself, head of the crime family stealing the treasury blind with Mnuchin and his cronies, selling off national resources as fast as he can, destroying the postal system (can’t produce evidence of mail fraud if you eliminate the mail system first, just like no testing means no virus pandemic). And paying off the Repiblicans that look the other way and vote for acquittal or whatever other raping of America Hair Furor commits.
Tollway even charges a ‘cash tax’; if you don’t get an ipass you pay double the toll
Calling it a cash tax doesn’t make it one. You aren’t getting the discount for paying using a method that simply costs less to operate.
As a pass-holder, why shouldn’t choosing to pay with a payment method that costs less to operate pass those savings on to me? Why should I have to pay for all the extra stuff (staff, benefits, operating costs, legacy equipment/buildings, and my time) that you need because you want to slow everyone down and pay cash that aren’t needed when paying with a MultiPass™?
Same thing when there was a “cash discount” at gas stations, so why weren’t you complaining about that discount then? The market solved that by the credit card rules requiring that prices be the same, though.
Toll roads don’t make money. And almost all toll roads are privately owned. So talk to your corrupt politicians (or vote them out) that sold off the public good to the highest campaign contributor every chance they could.
The Republicans talk about “where will we find the money for all these social good programs?” and weirdly, never have any problem finding money and American lives to spend on wars or to pay for the biggest tax cut to the rich in history (10 Trillion) or corporate giveaways and bailouts as ransom to save the country and the economy. So cry me a river when we talk about extending the UI benefits for millions.
There’s something wrong when companies pay wages less than unemployment benefits. Not that unemployment benefits are “too high”.
Tollway even charges a ‘cash tax’; if you don’t get an ipass you pay double the toll because its so inconvenient for them to handle cash that is supposed to be good for all debts public and private. Plus they get to track your travels with the ipass.
I am waiting for them to know you were speeding because of those passes and how long/short it took you to get between tolls and then they subtract the “ticket” fee from your pass.
@Kidsandliz@mike808 Already happens in some locales with tolls. They claim it doesn’t happen here, but as it is a potential revenue source I doubt it will remain that way.
@mike808 Originally it was cash tolls with everyone going through a booth or an automatic change basket in lanes that took up the whole tollway (or spread out to many more lanes then merged back down after the booths). Then they brought in ipass, still drove through a slow lane with cash options and waited for the gate to go up. Then they brought in some lanes that allowed ipass to slow roll through without stopping and started making ipass-only lanes. Then the expensive but convenient automatic toll sensors that you could drive straight through and started diverting cash payers to side booths (which was major construction and cost a pretty penny). Through all of this tolls were common across payment methods and going up regularly. And now they have exits that are not available for cash payers who will get a ticket if they use it (automatic cameras).
Then they doubled the toll on cash payers. At no point was anyone given a ‘discount’ and the toll rates keep getting ratcheted up. It also acts as another tax on out of staters who probably don’t have ipass.
FYI having worked retail in my youth, stores are charged a percentage of the sale price by the big credit card companies (perhaps that is not the case with actual ‘store’ brand credit cards, I don’t know). So what is wrong with the store, seeing that customer A buys a widget with cash and they make a dollar, and customer B buys the same widget with a credit card and they make $0.97… why not encourage the payment method that provides the most profit? These are private companies, doing business with private individuals, not the government backing an only slightly accountable tollway authority. Don’t like that a company is going to charge you full price if you use a mastercard but charge someone else a little less for paying cash? Go to another store.
Gas station, same thing. I wonder if your reference to ‘the market’ changing that is factual though, or if it was the huge, overbearing credit card companies forcing that requirement on gas stations if they wanted to be able to keep accepting cards at all. Somehow (admittedly without checking because I’m making dinner now) that sounds a lot more likely to me. The big credit card companies may not be monopolies but they are not far from it and they have a reputation and history of throwing their weight around when they can get away with it. Kind of like what microsoft did when they forced the volume PC manufacturers to pay a windows license fee for every machine they sold (and so also they charged their customers that fee) even if the machine was being bought to run another package or O/S. That’s not ‘the market’.
The tollway and .gov are effective monopolies. You have (almost) no choice. Yeah, maybe you can avoid the tollways (I do when possible) but every time the tollway has been modified or extended it seems they almost deliberately make non-toll travel to the areas affected harder and slower. I have seen this several times through the years. For work, I have no choice but to take the tollway to meet schedules (at least then it is work paying the tolls).
@duodec@Kidsandliz@mike808 Gas stations have gone back to charging more for credit. I think the credit card companies eventually lost that fight. I think if it was just the % charged by the processor, the cost of handling cash would be more. Really I think it’s that gas stations make little profit on gas, cash means you go inside, and buy some of that high profit everything else they sell. Most credit payers stay outside, get their gas and go, while a significant percentage of the cash payers can’t resist an impulse buy once inside.
@duodec@kevinrs@Kidsandliz
Gas not being $5/gal any more did more, and I think the C-store industry decided having to track two prices wasn’t worth the effort in the end.
It is an issue with low sales amounts, as there is a base per transaction price plus a percentage. So if a transaction is $10-$15 and the fee is $0.15 + 2.5%, it is significant. The difference is negligible when the transaction is $40-$50. I’m using a tank of gas as a rough measure. That’s also when you saw lots of “minimum $5 credit card purchase” signs. Now, not so much.
It’s not a strict $/tx base fee. More like a monthly fee (for the terminal rental) and a 2-5% rate.
BTW, MC, Visa, Amex, Discover don’t exactly set the rates - the banks do. It’s an agreement between the store’s bank and the card’s issuing bank to split the fee. The MC/V/AX/D fee is a portion of that, billed to the banks, not really per tx to the customer. They still make bags of money, but it is because there are so many transactions. Billions and billions.
I work in the industry, so I know a little about how it works.
@duodec@Kidsandliz@mike808 Most of the independent type gas stations, and some of the big chains have higher credit prices.
Cash transactions, they have to deal with things like making deposits, transferring money to a time locked safe, the possibility of getting robbed, employees stealing money, random shorts in the cash drawer, more cameras and time spent looking at video to deal with these problems, etc. With all of that, it’s probably costing more than the fees.
Getting gas somewhere like costco, they’ve wiped all that out, it’s completely self service, no cash. They have people working there, but not to take payment. That’s probably part of how they have about the lowest prices you can find, along with they’ve negotiated the fees to a minimum by only taking one type of card.
@mike808 large chain gas stations (Chevron, Texaco, Exxon, etc) process all credit cards through corporate, so the brand makes bank there too. They get the lowest wholesale rates for the millions of transactions they process and while I’ve not seen the numbers I am sure that’s an additional profit center for them (corporate, not the store). Even more so when the customer uses the store brand card and the banks are out of the loop.
@djslack That’s no different than any other retailer. They still have an acquiring bank, and don’t do any actual “processing” - the acquiring bank does. They get a lower fee from their acquiring bank, but they still can’t discount the network fee or the issuing bank portion of the interchange. If the acquiring bank gave the chain free costs, it still is in the 1-2% range. And the bank’s shareholders would be like wtf?
With affiliate cards (e.g. the Shell card) it is still issued by a chartered bank, not the retailer. Then there’s the matter of rewards. The affiliate pays for that, either in an increased rate from the issuer, or a direct charge. Somebody pays for the 5% cashback or whatever, plus the cost of the program.
Shell, 7-11, BP, etc use their brand to get better (discounted) rates - it’s just not a profit center because they’re not a bank, they sell gas and run C-stores.
There are “closed loop” white label cards, but those are still outsourced to issuers, and it’s a branding/customer service cost to the business, not a moneymaker for the retailer. The issuer gets the interest, being the issuing regulated, licensed bank to do that.
Just like painting a rental house isn’t a moneymaker as the cost cuts into your rental income, and it isn’t a moneymaker for your property manager who passes the cost on to you, or if you do it yourself, but it is for a painter who paints for a living.
Now we’re paying taxes for more of our online purchases, but Michigan still charges you a flat amount for all the purchases they assume you’re not being taxed on, as a percentage of your income. Unless you keep receipts of all of your online purchases and can prove you already paid it. So now we’re being double taxed.
@katbyter Vote for legislators who will fix that. Or move to a different state.
Or looking at it another way, Michigan has more tax revenue to pay for an educational system better than Mississippi’s and drinking water for Detroit that isn’t poisonous, and building a post-manufacturing job base in the state economy.
Now if you were talking about medical care here - it pretty much is an ongoing shift positions between the bottom 3 spots - MS, LA, and AR. I’ve had medical care in two of the three and with a few exceptions with a few individual doctors it is a toss up which state is the worse.
The access and care from Tulane Medical, LSU Medical, Charity, and the VA all right next door to each other is a godsend if you have a rare, genetic, or tropical climate related health issue that requires consults and broad experience.
Out in a small town, yeah, the care options are slim. Louisiana is not known for investing in the health of its citizenry since before it joined the union. Both times.
@katbyter Except, Michigan uses the honor system. They don’t automatically charge you a flat charge. They expect you to enter the amount. And if you want to enter an amount but are too lazy to itemize it, they offer a standard calc.
After reviewing the online eCommerce we do, we concluded virtually everyone already collects the Michigan “Use Tax”.
Here are all the states, with bonus capitols:
(They seem to have recently added Louisiana to tax collection status as well)
Just report less income when you file taxes to offset it. Boom. Easy.
@medz that’s one of orange skidmark’s dodges
Death and Taxes. No doubt on either. As far as taxes go, it is not paying the tax that bothers me, it’s when the tax revenues are misappropriated or used to buy favors, or wasted on the poorly devised and mismanaged civil rights flavor of the day program. That seems as sure to happen as death. It’s the reason human societies fail in an otherwise perfect scenario of fairness and equitable distribution. Greed, ego, low self-esteem, aka: human failings, corrupt and waste our hard earned money.
@accelerator welcome to crook county, the most corrupt county in one of the most corrupt states, illannoy.
Still maintain that it is unconstitutional for a state to impact interstate commerce by forcing out of state entities to collect tax for them. Or to make their residents pay taxes to them for purchases made in other states.
Should go back to how it was; only if a business had a real (not internet) presence in a state was it obliged to collect sales tax from residents of that state.
@duodec The supreme court disagrees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc.
@jmoor783 The supreme court has been known to be wrong. This is one of those cases.
@duodec
Your duly elected legislators enacted a use tax. It’s easier to compel fewer businesses to collect it (as a condition of their business license) than unreliable self-reporting by each resident. Technically it isn’t a sales tax, but a use tax you are and always were required to pay, just collected by the seller.
With distributed internet hosting, cloud-based hosting, affiliate sellers located who knows where, it just becomes impossible for a business to prove they don’t have nexus, when the cost is trivial to use software that can calculate the proper taxing jurisdictions and eliminate any risk of tax litigation with states and taxing jurisdictions (special taxes or breaks, like back-to-school tax-free days or on certain items or “economic development zones”) over the minutiae of “nexus”.
@mike808 Calling it a ‘use tax’ does not change what it is. You buy something from another state and if you don’t pay sales tax to that other state, illannoy declares that you must pay a tax to illannoy based on the sale price of that item. Technically (and I know there was controversy about this) if you buy something in another state during a tax holliday in that state and bring it into illannoy, you are required to pay that tax to illannoy.
If it acts like a sales tax, costs like a sales tax, is calculated like a sales tax, and is conditional on if you paid another state’s sales tax, then it shouldn’t matter what my duly elected state government calls it… it is a sales tax that has impact on interstate commerce imposed by one state on the commerce of its residents with another state. It is clearly unconstitutional. But it has been allowed by people/judges who consider the states’ ability to collect any possible source of revenue to be more important than the individual citizen (resident) of that state’s ability and right to retain as much as possible of what they have earned (which the state also taxes) and freedom to choose who they engage in commerce with.
Perhaps coming soon to a county or municipality near you. Because, why not? If the Constitution’s restrictions don’t matter at a state level, why shouldn’t lower levels of government get in on the action? Maybe they can call it an equity tax or a make-up tax… just so long as they don’t call it a ‘sales tax’ it should be all good.
But we can agree to disagree.
@duodec I sure hope you don’t plan to use any of the government provided benefits that were paid for by taxes you seem to think you’re entitled to freeload off of other taxpayers.
Things like interstate highway system, national parks that weren’t turned into open pit strip mines or razed to the ground to provide the cheap lumber your house was built with (you paid full price, foregoing your taxpayer funded discount, right?).
Oh, and I’m sure youll pass on that taxpayer funded covid vaccine, right?
You clearly are clueless as to all the benefits you have been enjoying all these years paid for by taxpayers. Run a company? Where did your employees get their education? Taxpayer-funded schools and universities? Expect a police force to show up if you’re a victim or need coordination in a disaster? Ever had a flood wipe out your home, your business, your customers homes, your employees homes?
If taxes are too high in the US, then go back to wherever your ancestors came from.
@duodec
On a deeper level, that we pay taxes is the reason money exists. No taxes means there is no dollar, or an economy or any of the financial constructs that power the world economies.
@mike808 Nobody said anything about not paying taxes at all. We pay too much tax, between exorbitant sales taxes in this county (not surprising since it is basically a criminal enterprise masquerading as a government), state income taxes (which keep getting jacked up temporarily then the temp increases become permanent every time), federal income taxes, excise taxes on numerous items, gas taxes (sales and ‘extra’), tolls that were supposed to go away once the roads they helped fund were paid for but never seem to go away and just increase (dramatically at times) while the tollway authority buys helicopters and luxurious offices… ad nauseum. We haven’t done it this year but in the past we’ve done the check on 'when in the year the money you make is actually your own (effectively all taxes paid) and it has been as late as mid-late May. Runs into June when we make a large purchase (car) in this county and so pay several more percent in sales tax plus whatever new car taxes and fees they have stuck on that neighboring counties seem to manage without.
That’s 38-42% of everything we make (except for tax deferred retirement accounts, which are becoming an increasingly eyed target for those who want to tax everything) going to pay for all the stuff you listed, as well as lining the pockets of the crook county crooks and their friends and family and patronage workers.
Tollway even charges a ‘cash tax’; if you don’t get an ipass you pay double the toll because its so inconvenient for them to handle cash that is supposed to be good for all debts public and private. Plus they get to track your travels with the ipass.
My particular issue is that the ‘use’ and interstate collection of sales taxes are violations, as far as I and many others are concerned, of a clear restriction that the Constitution placed on the states. And they are getting away with it. Please don’t presume that my anger at this violation is an indication of being one of the anarchists who don’t want any government or services and don’t want to pay for anything.
I just think that the way thing are going, there will be literally nothing, no action, no activity, no trade or purchase that isn’t going to be subject to one or more taxes in a few more decades. And it still won’t be enough for all the levels of government.
@duodec I misread your rant as Reaganomics “get rid of government”, not Trumanesque “buck stops here” accountability and careful stewards of common treasure.
The root is big money corruption in politics, with corrupt politicians (Looking at the Republicans going back to Nixon - AG Bill Barr’s cohort) that have feathered their nests and furthered their corruption over decades, often as ransom for holding the democrats hostage “fair and balanced” bullshit, like your charity and good works are an acceptable “balance” to my corruption and grift, with mine just a little bit more, every iteration.
Citizens United, Garland denied the SC and Kavanaugh rammed through. Along with hundreds of unqualified ideologue right-wing activist judges just as much on the take as the Senators putting them there.
And the Grifter-in-Chief himself, head of the crime family stealing the treasury blind with Mnuchin and his cronies, selling off national resources as fast as he can, destroying the postal system (can’t produce evidence of mail fraud if you eliminate the mail system first, just like no testing means no virus pandemic). And paying off the Repiblicans that look the other way and vote for acquittal or whatever other raping of America Hair Furor commits.
@duodec
Calling it a cash tax doesn’t make it one. You aren’t getting the discount for paying using a method that simply costs less to operate.
As a pass-holder, why shouldn’t choosing to pay with a payment method that costs less to operate pass those savings on to me? Why should I have to pay for all the extra stuff (staff, benefits, operating costs, legacy equipment/buildings, and my time) that you need because you want to slow everyone down and pay cash that aren’t needed when paying with a MultiPass™?
Same thing when there was a “cash discount” at gas stations, so why weren’t you complaining about that discount then? The market solved that by the credit card rules requiring that prices be the same, though.
Toll roads don’t make money. And almost all toll roads are privately owned. So talk to your corrupt politicians (or vote them out) that sold off the public good to the highest campaign contributor every chance they could.
The Republicans talk about “where will we find the money for all these social good programs?” and weirdly, never have any problem finding money and American lives to spend on wars or to pay for the biggest tax cut to the rich in history (10 Trillion) or corporate giveaways and bailouts as ransom to save the country and the economy. So cry me a river when we talk about extending the UI benefits for millions.
There’s something wrong when companies pay wages less than unemployment benefits. Not that unemployment benefits are “too high”.
@duodec @mike808
I am waiting for them to know you were speeding because of those passes and how long/short it took you to get between tolls and then they subtract the “ticket” fee from your pass.
@Kidsandliz @mike808 Already happens in some locales with tolls. They claim it doesn’t happen here, but as it is a potential revenue source I doubt it will remain that way.
@mike808 Originally it was cash tolls with everyone going through a booth or an automatic change basket in lanes that took up the whole tollway (or spread out to many more lanes then merged back down after the booths). Then they brought in ipass, still drove through a slow lane with cash options and waited for the gate to go up. Then they brought in some lanes that allowed ipass to slow roll through without stopping and started making ipass-only lanes. Then the expensive but convenient automatic toll sensors that you could drive straight through and started diverting cash payers to side booths (which was major construction and cost a pretty penny). Through all of this tolls were common across payment methods and going up regularly. And now they have exits that are not available for cash payers who will get a ticket if they use it (automatic cameras).
Then they doubled the toll on cash payers. At no point was anyone given a ‘discount’ and the toll rates keep getting ratcheted up. It also acts as another tax on out of staters who probably don’t have ipass.
FYI having worked retail in my youth, stores are charged a percentage of the sale price by the big credit card companies (perhaps that is not the case with actual ‘store’ brand credit cards, I don’t know). So what is wrong with the store, seeing that customer A buys a widget with cash and they make a dollar, and customer B buys the same widget with a credit card and they make $0.97… why not encourage the payment method that provides the most profit? These are private companies, doing business with private individuals, not the government backing an only slightly accountable tollway authority. Don’t like that a company is going to charge you full price if you use a mastercard but charge someone else a little less for paying cash? Go to another store.
Gas station, same thing. I wonder if your reference to ‘the market’ changing that is factual though, or if it was the huge, overbearing credit card companies forcing that requirement on gas stations if they wanted to be able to keep accepting cards at all. Somehow (admittedly without checking because I’m making dinner now) that sounds a lot more likely to me. The big credit card companies may not be monopolies but they are not far from it and they have a reputation and history of throwing their weight around when they can get away with it. Kind of like what microsoft did when they forced the volume PC manufacturers to pay a windows license fee for every machine they sold (and so also they charged their customers that fee) even if the machine was being bought to run another package or O/S. That’s not ‘the market’.
The tollway and .gov are effective monopolies. You have (almost) no choice. Yeah, maybe you can avoid the tollways (I do when possible) but every time the tollway has been modified or extended it seems they almost deliberately make non-toll travel to the areas affected harder and slower. I have seen this several times through the years. For work, I have no choice but to take the tollway to meet schedules (at least then it is work paying the tolls).
@duodec @mike808 On the PA turnpike one of the tool booth people told me the cash price was the “Turnpike Commission’s Extortion Project”.
@duodec @Kidsandliz @mike808 Gas stations have gone back to charging more for credit. I think the credit card companies eventually lost that fight. I think if it was just the % charged by the processor, the cost of handling cash would be more. Really I think it’s that gas stations make little profit on gas, cash means you go inside, and buy some of that high profit everything else they sell. Most credit payers stay outside, get their gas and go, while a significant percentage of the cash payers can’t resist an impulse buy once inside.
@duodec @kevinrs @Kidsandliz
Gas not being $5/gal any more did more, and I think the C-store industry decided having to track two prices wasn’t worth the effort in the end.
It is an issue with low sales amounts, as there is a base per transaction price plus a percentage. So if a transaction is $10-$15 and the fee is $0.15 + 2.5%, it is significant. The difference is negligible when the transaction is $40-$50. I’m using a tank of gas as a rough measure. That’s also when you saw lots of “minimum $5 credit card purchase” signs. Now, not so much.
It’s not a strict $/tx base fee. More like a monthly fee (for the terminal rental) and a 2-5% rate.
BTW, MC, Visa, Amex, Discover don’t exactly set the rates - the banks do. It’s an agreement between the store’s bank and the card’s issuing bank to split the fee. The MC/V/AX/D fee is a portion of that, billed to the banks, not really per tx to the customer. They still make bags of money, but it is because there are so many transactions. Billions and billions.
I work in the industry, so I know a little about how it works.
@duodec @Kidsandliz @mike808 Most of the independent type gas stations, and some of the big chains have higher credit prices.
Cash transactions, they have to deal with things like making deposits, transferring money to a time locked safe, the possibility of getting robbed, employees stealing money, random shorts in the cash drawer, more cameras and time spent looking at video to deal with these problems, etc. With all of that, it’s probably costing more than the fees.
Getting gas somewhere like costco, they’ve wiped all that out, it’s completely self service, no cash. They have people working there, but not to take payment. That’s probably part of how they have about the lowest prices you can find, along with they’ve negotiated the fees to a minimum by only taking one type of card.
@mike808 large chain gas stations (Chevron, Texaco, Exxon, etc) process all credit cards through corporate, so the brand makes bank there too. They get the lowest wholesale rates for the millions of transactions they process and while I’ve not seen the numbers I am sure that’s an additional profit center for them (corporate, not the store). Even more so when the customer uses the store brand card and the banks are out of the loop.
@djslack That’s no different than any other retailer. They still have an acquiring bank, and don’t do any actual “processing” - the acquiring bank does. They get a lower fee from their acquiring bank, but they still can’t discount the network fee or the issuing bank portion of the interchange. If the acquiring bank gave the chain free costs, it still is in the 1-2% range. And the bank’s shareholders would be like wtf?
With affiliate cards (e.g. the Shell card) it is still issued by a chartered bank, not the retailer. Then there’s the matter of rewards. The affiliate pays for that, either in an increased rate from the issuer, or a direct charge. Somebody pays for the 5% cashback or whatever, plus the cost of the program.
Shell, 7-11, BP, etc use their brand to get better (discounted) rates - it’s just not a profit center because they’re not a bank, they sell gas and run C-stores.
There are “closed loop” white label cards, but those are still outsourced to issuers, and it’s a branding/customer service cost to the business, not a moneymaker for the retailer. The issuer gets the interest, being the issuing regulated, licensed bank to do that.
Just like painting a rental house isn’t a moneymaker as the cost cuts into your rental income, and it isn’t a moneymaker for your property manager who passes the cost on to you, or if you do it yourself, but it is for a painter who paints for a living.
Now we’re paying taxes for more of our online purchases, but Michigan still charges you a flat amount for all the purchases they assume you’re not being taxed on, as a percentage of your income. Unless you keep receipts of all of your online purchases and can prove you already paid it. So now we’re being double taxed.
@katbyter Vote for legislators who will fix that. Or move to a different state.
Or looking at it another way, Michigan has more tax revenue to pay for an educational system better than Mississippi’s and drinking water for Detroit that isn’t poisonous, and building a post-manufacturing job base in the state economy.
@mike808 sure, because they’ve done so much good with all the money they had. Flint water didn’t happen because of lack of tax money.
@katbyter @mike808 Hey Mississippi is ranked 46 this year. New Mexico is on the bottom right now
https://wallethub.com/edu/e/states-with-the-best-schools/5335/
Now if you were talking about medical care here - it pretty much is an ongoing shift positions between the bottom 3 spots - MS, LA, and AR. I’ve had medical care in two of the three and with a few exceptions with a few individual doctors it is a toss up which state is the worse.
@katbyter @Kidsandliz
In Louisiana, it depends a lot on the care needed.
The access and care from Tulane Medical, LSU Medical, Charity, and the VA all right next door to each other is a godsend if you have a rare, genetic, or tropical climate related health issue that requires consults and broad experience.
Out in a small town, yeah, the care options are slim. Louisiana is not known for investing in the health of its citizenry since before it joined the union. Both times.
@katbyter Except, Michigan uses the honor system. They don’t automatically charge you a flat charge. They expect you to enter the amount. And if you want to enter an amount but are too lazy to itemize it, they offer a standard calc.
After reviewing the online eCommerce we do, we concluded virtually everyone already collects the Michigan “Use Tax”.
Now, even fucking Meh.