Canada has implemented a new tax savings from December to February for some things like taxable groceries, crafts, and gaming physical media. I wanted to get a new Xbox controller and found the best price at Walmart for $55 a week ago. The tax holiday starts today and I now see that the $55 has increased to $62 and change, which is about how much tax I should be saving. Great to see this thinly veiled attempt to help Canadians ( /s - win votes) is just going to be extra profit in the corporations’ pockets.
I don’t say any of this to say that I think what Walmart is doing here is ethical, onky to say that it is logical from their standpoint if they assume there won’t be any blowback.
Companies charge what they think they can get for a product. The tax is part of the price. If they think an item will sell for $5.26 including tax, it is reasonable for them to think it will still sell for $5.26 if the item isn’t taxed.
That isn’t to say this is nice on their part, but the current system doesn’t incentivise them to be nice. It incentivises profit.
It does seem like they took the easy route to gain more profit. It is likely that, in the a absence of tax, their profit would be maximized by a price that is somewhere between the old pre-tax price and the old post-tax price.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have been surprised. This is normal psychopathic behaviour for a corporation.
Not buying a new controller until Valve Ibex releases. If one of mine breaks before then, it’ll be replaced by an inexpensive 8bitdo 2C.
Tax credits are always a government gift to corporations.
Well the debate should be over whether the taxes cause things to be expensive or it’s corporate greed causing things to be expensive.
Next time you see one of the ubiquitous Poilievre ads claiming it’s taxes that’s making things unaffordable, think about where the problems actually are.
All prices are set based on what consumers are willing to pay.
The only way prices ever go down is by exercising a decision not to buy something or to go somewhere for an item.
It will not come from the government, unless the government mandates a specific rate.
They could also provide the cheaper alternative, generating revenue for the government, providing goods at a discount and forcing corporations to match prices.
Like that’ll happen, though.
This is why sales tax is silly unless it’s purposefully punitive. Like with cigarettes.
If they want to give back to consumers, then literally give money to consumers.
I think it depends on the area. Places like Florida did well with sales taxes because they have large amounts of tourism. So they can have no state income tax, and no tax on groceries, yet make enough in taxes to do everything else they need. That said, sales tax is 6% from the state, and areas boost it based on other needs. .5% for teachers and .5% for local infrastructure was what I grew up with.
Now living in Tennessee taxes are 10% and they charge it on groceries here… which kind of sucks. I wish stores would just include the tax on the sticker. When running on a budget I really don’t want to be saying 6.99 okay that’s 7.69 in my head and have to keep track while figuring out what I can afford to eat that week.
Well the government can break up corporations which results in more competition. They can also enforce standards which also allows more competition. This gives people more options so they can’t just set prices in a monopolistic way.
Unfortunately there’s not much the Canadian government can do about Walmart and Microsoft as they aren’t Canadian companies. And Kamala’s opportunity economy has been cancelled so it doesn’t look there’s going to be any positive change in the US for foreseeable future.
But they could break up Loblaw’s at least.
They can absolutely tell Walmart they have to reduce their footprint or break up in Canada. They don’t lose their sovereignty just because it’s an American Corporation. If they think Walmart is using global profits to unduly influence Canadian markets they can introduce a tax or even ban them.
Reminds me when Alberta reduced the tax on gas, and within a few weeks consumers were paying the same amount again
Betcha you get reminded again when Canada sweeps the cons in because cArBOn tax and then we pay the same by Monday for everything.
Talking point bots will blame Trudeau for this.
You didn’t happen to take screenshots did you? It’s something that should be reported to the media as well
You didn’t happen to take screenshots did you? It’s something that should be reported to the media as well
I wish I had thought of it. I tried the Honey extension which sometimes shows historical prices, but no luck this time. I couldn’t find any other way to double check the previous prices either.
See if it’s on the Internet Archive (web.archive.org)
I tried and I got, “Wayback Machine has not archived that URL.”
Kroger (grocery store) is doing the same thing this week. They’re doing a 20% off “holiday bonus” discount on a one per-customer basis (20% off your entire order). The catch? Every item in the store is at least 20% more expensive than it was last week.
I don’t buy soda often but fuck I’m tired of their soda sales. Buy 2 get 1 free on 12 packs. (9.99) A piece. Then 1 week out of the month or so they are buy 2 get 3 free. Still 9.99 a 12 pack.
So that’s:9.99 for 12 cans. (.83 cents per can) 19.98 for 36 cans (.56 cents per can) 19.98 for 60 cans (.33 cents per can)
I really don’t need 60 cans of soda, but I don’t want to pay .83 cents per can. So all it’s done is make me stop buying soda all together for the most part.
It can’t be coke doing it either, because it goes for “all Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper products”
Time to introduce the “lowest price from the last 30 days” requirement like in Europe.
dont expect it to go back down
the prices probably won’t go back down in february, either.
Prices go up and stay up.
They’ll only go down if customers stop buying, which they won’t.
In Australia, that’s a crime.
Might be betraying my age here, but do you remember when GST was 7%? EXACTLY the same thing happened.
GST breaks strictly pad the revenues of business AT THE COST of funds to the public purse. Does a fat fucking zero to the wallets of consumers.
GST?
Sales tax, has different acronyms in different countries such as Value Added Tax (VAT), Goods and Services Tax (GST)…
General sales tax we have had in Canada for years. Tax on all goods and services. Used to be 7% but dropped to 5% a number of years ago
Ah gotcha, thanks
See, trickle down economics works ladies and gents /s
That’s not really relevant. A break in sales tax that just targets consumer necessities should be a progressive tax.
The problem is that a lack of competition in this country means that grocers can raise their prices with no fear of losing customers
Fuck this is gold.
Well, unless people realise the actual worth of gold… But until then.
How would trickle down work with gold? I’m picturing some kind of golden shower?
sigh
unzips
This has nothing to do with supply-side versus demand-side economics.
EDIT: Actually, I take that back. It does to the extent that it is aiming to provide an incentive on the demand side, which is the opposite of what you’re complaining about.
That’s probably illegal.
It has been ruled illegal in the Netherlands only last year but companies still do it and het away with it.
It was so hastily-implemented that I think it’s either an oversight or by design.
It is in the US.
The FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing generally require that a seller offer an item at a price for a reasonable, substantial period of time in good faith, and in the regular course of business, before advertising that price as the former or regular price (16 C.F.R. § 233.1). The FTC considers it deceptive to offer an item for sale at a higher price for a short period of time in order to support a claim that an item is discounted when the price is then lowered. This practice is prohibited.
Additionally, most states have consumer protection statutes that prohibit sellers from making false or misleading statements of fact concerning the reasons for, existence of, or amount of a price reduction (for example, Cal. Civ. Code § 1770(a)(13)). Several states also expressly regulate the length of time an item must be offered at a regular price and amount of time it is on sale (for more information, see Practice Notes, Promotional Pricing: Specific State Laws and “Up To” Discounting Law and Practice: Promotional Pricing: State-by-State Requirements).
From here
tell that to amazon and every other retailer that jacks prices up the week or so before a ‘sale’
For Amazon, I use camelcamelcamel to see price history. Personally I’ve not seen price increases just for holiday sales but I also don’t buy a lot of stuff on these sorts of days, I just set a price alert and wait for the email.
Sites like these are why amazon has been using more coupons at check out instead of straight discounts. Messes with the price tracking
How does that help Amazon if on the price tracker it appears $20, but with the coupon it’s actually $10?
If I’m using a price tracker and see it for $20 pre-coupon but another site has it for $15, wouldn’t that just drive my business to the other site?
It seems like with using coupons it’s just artificially inflating the price on whatever trackers, and that seems like it would be bad for sales to me.
The goal is to mess up price history. So it will have a list price of $50 but with a coupon to make it $35. Then a sale day happens and they lower the price to $40. It’s 20% off! Good deal.
It doesn’t really help if you’re comparison shopping with alerts. I don’t know that Amazon thinks you’re going to go to another site.
Ah, yeah that makes sense now.
In that case, they won’t lower it in February than it’s not illegal because they’re not offering it for a higher price for a short amount of time.
It is, and they don’t care.
When fines are “the cost of doing business.”
Fine should be a direct cut of company value or profits. Proportional, not an absolute value.
If the controller was $55 yesterday and $62 today there would definitely be shenanigans, but a week ago? It could just be that a sale ended since you last looked.
Anyway, I don’t see $62 Xbox controllers on their site, checking from Nova Scotia. Official controllers are the usual $70-something and there’s PowerA brand for $55.
They are ridiculously expensive to begin with, thus my waiting for a special occasion to spend that much money to get a first-party one. Here it is, probably priced lower than the others because of the ugly colour that I kind of like.
That controller is the same price on Amazon, and Camelcamelcamel shows it went up to that on Dec 6, Friday of last week. It was probably the same with Walmart.
