I'd outlaw sauce bottles which make getting it all out harder, especially the ones which don't have the opening at the bottom and make it impossible to put the bottle with the opening facing downwards.
I'd outlaw sauce bottles which make getting it all out harder, especially the ones which don't have the opening at the bottom and make it impossible to put the bottle with the opening facing downwards.
The last part is made more complicated by having different tax rates on different items in different places at different times.
You see a national ad for Walmart with a widget on sale. Depending on what city and state you buy it, the price will change because the tax rates are different between and even within jurisdictions.
Maybe the Walmart you go to has a development agreement where they pay higher local tax as a way to cover the infrastructure project the City has to complete to support the building. Or maybe it's the opposite and Walmart built a bunch of streets an utilities they dedicated to the City and now they don't pay sales tax to the local jurisdiction.
Or maybe on September 1st sales tax rates changed in the middle of an ad campaign. Or maybe there's an additional tax exemption due to a Development Agreement.
Or maybe that kayak is no longer taxed at the time sale because you bought a trolling motor at the same time and now it's classified as a motor boat and the customer pays state sales tax when they register it with the state?
It's really, really difficult to predict taxes when you've for so many wacky jurisdictional issues that affect the tax rate.
I think if a company gets large enough to cover multiple jurisdictions, then you can expend the cost to figure that all out. If anything it might make it harder for these mega companies. Screw em. They make plenty of profit. They'll adapt.
Separately, more consistent taxation would be nice.
Half of the scenarios you noted are not ones I have ever heard of (and I would bet are totally made up). Why would WalMart shoppers be exempt from sales tax?
You are right that advertising price with tax may be unreasonable. That does not preclude the store from putting the price with tax on the shelf. Out of all the scenarios you described, the only one that this would not cover is having an item be taxed differently if bought in conjunction with another item, but that can be noted in the same way that stores note a bundle or a bulk sales price ($1 each or 5 for $4).
There is difficulty in the case of a charge in tax rate (how often do those happen? Once every few years) or if there is a tax holiday (I see plenty of clothing stores have a sign for "15% off the marked price"). Those can be handled by having computer controlled shelf prices, which have existed for at least 20 years but never caught on much.